Protein Biologic Analyzer

This is a Sources Sought Notice ONLY.  Requests for copies of a solicitation will not receive a response. 

This Notice is for planning purposes only and is not a Request for Proposal or Request for Quotation or an obligation on the part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for conducting a follow-on acquisition. NIST does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this Notice or otherwise pay for the information requested. No entitlement or payment of direct or indirect costs or charges by NIST will arise as a result of submission of responses to this Notice and NIST use of such information. NIST recognizes that proprietary components, interfaces and equipment, and clearly mark restricted or proprietary components, interfaces and equipment, and clearly mark restricted or proprietary data and present it as an addendum to the non-restricted/non-proprietary information. In the absence of such identification, NIST will assume to have unlimited rights to all technical data in the information paper. 

NO SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS EXIST AT THIS TIME.

Requirement: Protein Biologic Analyzer

NIST is seeking information from sources with the following capabilities:

General Hardware Requirements:

• New hardware and not refurbished hardware.
• Auto sampling capability accommodating at least 10 samples at a time.
• Instruments controlled by either an integrated controller or by a connected computer and automated so that all measurements can be performed using defined protocols with no manual interventions required during normal operation other than autosampler loading.
• Instruments with defined protocols for calibration and/or quality control of all measured parameters to within manufacturer-specified tolerances.

General Software Requirements:

Use of manufacturer-specific or proprietary software necessary for offline review of measured data or for exporting of measured data to a plaintext format, such as comma separated values (.csv) and providing such software compatible with a Windows-10 based personal computer (PC).

Specifications:

• Measuring samples of mammalian cell cultures containing suspended cells.

• Measuring proof of clonality by imaging single cells in a whole well plate

• Measuring protein concentration from 2.5 mg/L to 2000 mg/L
• Capability of viable cell counting

• Tracking of colony outgrowth from day 0 to full confluency
• Capability of glycan analysis for mannose, galactose, fucose, 2,3-sialic acid, 2,6-sialic acid, and sialic acid on O-glycans.
• Capability of automated data monitoring, analysis and reporting for per cell protein yield and glycan distribution.

Consumables:

• 384 PAIA Glycan Assay Plate pre-loaded with functionalized beads
• Lectins specific for the following glycans:
• Fucose on N-glycans
• Galactose on N-glycans
• Mannose on N-glycans
• 2,6 linked sialic acids on N-glycans
• 2,3 linked sialic acids on N-glycans
• Sialic acids on O-glycans
• PAIAmix Sample Buffer

Interested parties shall describe the capabilities of their organization as it relates to the equipment described above. NIST anticipates issuing a Request for Quotation in the second quarter of FY2025 and awarding a contract no later than the third quarter of FY2025.

NIST is seeking responses from all responsible sources, including large and small businesses. The small business size standard associated with the NAICS code for this effort, 334516, is 1000 employees. Please include your company’s size classification and socio-economic status in any response to this notice. 

After results of this market research are obtained and analyzed, NIST may conduct a competitive procurement and subsequently award a contract. Companies that can provide such equipment are requested to email a written response describing their abilities to jennifer.priebe@nist.gov no later than the response date for this sources sought notice.

The following information is requested to be provided as part of the response to this sources sought notice:

1. Name, Address, Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), CAGE code, and point of contact information of your company.
2. Any information on the company’s small business certifications, if applicable.
3. Description of your company’s capabilities as they relate to the equipment described in this notice.
4. A description of your company’s previous experience providing the equipment described in this notice.
5. Indication of whether the equipment described in this notice are currently offered via your company’s GSA Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) contracts, Government-wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs), or other existing Government-wide contract vehicles; and, if so, the contract number(s) for those vehicles.
6. Any other relevant information that is not listed above which the Government should consider in finalizing its market research.
7. Place of Manufacture of the equipment.

Responses are limited to a total of twelve (12) pages. The responses must be in MS Word format.  Pages shall be 8½-inch x 11-inch, using Times New Roman 11 Point Font. Each page shall have adequate margins on each side (at least one inch) of the page. Header/footer information (which does not include any information to be analyzed) may be included in the 1" margin space.