Bioreliance Corporation

Bioreliance Corporation, Life Sciences Services Division (doing business as Bioreliance Corp De), operates as a foreign-owned, for-profit testing laboratory subsidiary of Sigma-Aldrich, Inc., providing microbiological and biochemical testing services to federal health research agencies as a prime contractor. The vendor competes in full-and-open procurements without set-aside designations, with 100% of recent awards issued as prime contracts and no recurring participation in government-wide acquisition vehicles or blanket purchase agreements outside its core customer relationships.

Bioreliance's capability portfolio centers on specialized microbiological testing critical to pharmaceutical and biotechnology development: isolator sterility testing using direct inoculation methods, Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL) endotoxin testing, bioburden testing via membrane filtration, mycoplasma detection by real-time PCR, and cGMP-grade cell bank characterization including tumorigenicity and oncogenicity testing. Representative federal work includes a $672 thousand definitive contract with CDC Pittsburgh for EXPI293F cell line testing services (ultimate completion July 2026), a $248 thousand firm-fixed-price purchase order from CDC for follow-up tumorigenicity and oncogenicity testing on the Expi293F Master Cell Bank supporting influenza vaccine development (completed September 2026), a $237 thousand CDC Pittsburgh order for laboratory sterility testing in support of investigational new drug applications (completed September 2023), and multiple $14,000–$35,000 purchase orders from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for endotoxin, sterility, and general safety testing on vaccine candidates including the Pfs230D1-CRM197 malaria vaccine and COVID-19 research supporting rapid mycoplasma detection. A June 2026 $233 thousand purchase order from CDC Pittsburgh for cryogenic storage of CGMP-grade cell banks runs through May 2031.

Customer concentration is heavily weighted toward the National Institutes of Health. The National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences together account for a large share of Bioreliance's recent award count, though by potential-dollar value the National Cancer Institute (80 awards, $96.7 million combined potential value) is the dominant customer, followed by the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development (4 awards, $70.8 million) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (55 awards, $51.1 million). The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has placed 18 awards ($224 thousand combined potential value). Bioreliance serves 25 distinct federal agencies across 476 total awards in the source data, with the top five customers accounting for 47% of recent award count and 89% of combined potential value. The breadth of the portfolio reflects the vendor's historical participation since 1991, though recent annual activity has slowed to one to five awards per year since 2022.

Bioreliance places work under five named HHSN indefinite delivery contracts and blanket purchase agreements, led by Indefinite Delivery Contract HHSN27320060003I (181 task orders, $411 thousand combined potential value) and BPA HHSN263199800048997B (71 task orders, $403 thousand combined potential value), both administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. An EPA Indefinite Delivery Contract EPD11081 carries three task orders worth $584 thousand. Recompete exposure in the next twenty-four months is minimal — one award with combined potential value of $249 thousand faces ultimate completion inside that window.

Service Contract Inventory captures only four SCI-reportable records across FY2022–FY2024, reflecting Bioreliance's primary reliance on small purchase orders and laboratory-services delivery rather than large staffed-team contracts. SCI-reported invoicing totaled $420 thousand across FY2022–FY2024 ($370 thousand in FY2022, zero in FY2023, $50 thousand in FY2024), with contractor labor at 0.2 FTEs in FY2022, zero in FY2023, and 3.3 FTEs in FY2024. Government-paid hourly rates on SCI-reportable prime contracts ranged from $520 to $805 per hour, with a median of $663 per hour. Bioreliance performs approximately zero percent of hours through subcontractors on its SCI-reportable prime work, building delivery teams internally. The vendor has served as a subcontractor to Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai on a July 2025 vaccine candidate quality-control release testing sub-award and to Colorado State University on an April 2024 COVID-19 inactivated-virus vaccine sub-award, indicating secondary use as a testing-laboratory subcontractor to academic vaccine-development primes.