This is a Small Business Sources Sought (SBSS) notice. This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. The purpose of this notice is to obtain information regarding: (1) the availability and capability of qualified small business sources; (2) whether they are small businesses; HUBZone small businesses; service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses; 8(a) small businesses; veteran-owned small businesses; woman-owned small businesses; or small disadvantaged businesses; and (3) their size classification relative to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for the proposed acquisition. Your responses to the information requested will assist the Government in determining the appropriate acquisition method, including whether a set-aside is possible. An organization that is not considered a small business under the applicable NAICS code should not submit a response to this notice.

This notice is issued to help determine the availability and type of qualified Small Business companies technically capable of meeting this potential government requirement and to determine the method of acquisition. It is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government to issue a solicitation or ultimately award a contract. Responses will not be considered as proposals or quotes. No award will be made as a result of this notice. The Government will NOT be responsible for any costs incurred by the respondents to this notice. The notice is strictly for research and information purposes only.

The information requested will assist the Government in determining the appropriate acquisition method including small business socio-economic set-aside possibilities and to determine the availability of qualified Small Business companies technically capable of meeting the Government's potential requirement. All Small Business companies with the capability and availability to perform the requirement under the applicable NAICS code are invited to submit a response to this notice.

NORTH AMERICAN CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM (NAICS) CODE
The NAICS code applicable to this requirement is 334516 Analytical Laboratory Instrument Manufacturing with size standard 1000 employees.

BACKGROUND
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the nation's leading medical research agency and the primary Federal agency whose mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) is a translational science center whose mission is to catalyze the generation of innovative methods and technologies that will enhance the development, testing and implementation of diagnostics and therapeutics across a wide range of human diseases and conditions.

The Division of Pre-Clinical Innovation (DPI) at NCATS plans, conducts and uses both internal and contract resources to advance collaborative research projects across the pre-clinical phases of the translational science spectrum. To establish and move stem cell technologies forward through a more centralized effort, NCATS has launched the Stem Cell Translation Laboratory (SCTL) within the DPI. SCTL scientists work to perform deep profiling of complex cell populations with high-throughput digital gene expression analysis of individual cells. The SCTL has a potential requirement to obtain assay chips and reagent kits manufactured by 10X Genomics, Inc. to meet SCTL project milestones for the Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative. The assay chips and reagent kits will be used to support ongoing projects on defining stem cell differentiation process in heterogeneous population require the examination of transcriptional profiling at single cell level.

The opioid crisis highlights the urgent need for novel non-addictive pain medications, as well as improved treatments for opioid addiction and overdose. There is a need for pharmacological agents directed at novel targets to test new therapeutic hypotheses, new clinic-ready drugs directed at those targets, and new testing systems with the potential to be more predictive of human clinical response than traditionally used models. Through the HEAL Initiative, NCATS will focus on the development of human cell-based models of opioid misuse and addiction and of pain. Specifically, the SCTL aims to develop a renewable supply of human cell-based models focusing on new patient-derived iPSC lines that give rise to specialized, functional nerve cells that are relevant for opioid misuse and addiction, and pain.

Purpose and Objectives
The purpose of this Small Business Sources Sought notice is to determine eligible sources capable of achieving the essential features of this potential requirement, which is to obtain reagent chip kits to be compaitlbe with the existing 10x Genomic Chromium Single Cell Controller as listed and specified in this notice.

The objective for SCTL scientists is to simultaneously examine the cellular context of the immune system and the immune repertoires of hundreds to tens of thousands of T and B cells on a cell-by-cell basis. The kits are critical for understanding the real nature of an individual genome in order to facilitate more personalized human disease research, understand the true diversity of individuals in population studies, and create accurate reference genomes for diploid organisms. Furthermore, it provides a comprehensive, scalable approach to determine genome heterogeneity and map clonal evolution by profiling hundreds to thousands of cells in a single sample. Using these kits, SCTL researchers will be able to create sequencing libraries from the DNA of single cells and analyze the genomic data with intuitive software and visualization tools.

Project Requirements
Offerors submitting a response to this Small Business Sources Sought notice shall possess the ability to achieve the essential government features specified herein. Products offered must include those salient physical, functional, or other characteristics of the assay chips and reagent kits manufactured by 10X Genomics, Inc. as described in this notice, which are deemed essential in meeting the government's needs. Additionally, the assay chips and reagent kits must be compatabile with current existing Government-owned equipment; specifically: the 10X Genomics Chromium Single Cell Controller and the Illumina NextSeq 500 Sequencer system.

Ongoing projects on defining stem cell differentiation process in heterogeneous population require the examination of copy number variation profiling at single cell level. Genomic stability is critical for the cinical use of human induce pluripotent stem cells. Recent publication suggested dynamic nature of genomic abnormalities in pluripotent stem cells, therefore frequent genomic monitoring is essential for SCTL lab to develop reliable differentiation protocol for clinical grade stem cell derived cells. The Chromium reagent kits, chip kits, and multiplex kits are designed specifically for use with the 10X Genomics Chromium Single Cell Controller based on the droplet-based reagent delivery method that uses a microfluidic chip to provide high-throughput single cell preparation and 65% cell capture efficiency.

Specifically, the following are considered essential features of this potential requirement:
1. Chromium^TM Single Cell Chip C Kit, 48 rxns:
• Loaded with the Cell Beads, and cell suspension to generate cell beads partition for following reaction. Cell beads will lyse the cell and remove all nuclear proteins while the genomic DNA remains trapped in cell beads. The reaction will proceed using chip D to generate cell beads and gel beads (CBGB)
• Compatible with 10X Genomics Chromium Single Cell Controller

2. Chromium^TM Single Cell Chip D Kit, 48 rxns:
• Sequential reaction from Chip C kit, cell beads with single cell genomic DNA from Chromium^TM Single Cell Chip C Kit will load to Chip D to generate cell beads and gel beads (CBGB) to perform copy number variation profiling.
• Compatible with 10X Genomics Chromium Single Cell Controller

3. Chromium Single Cell DNA Cell Bead Kit, 16 rxns

 

4. Chromium Single Cell DNA Library & Gel Bead Kit, 16 rxns
• Leverages Linked-Read data to reconstruct a diploid genome without the need for a reference
• Routinely resolves the genome into extremely large haplotype phase blocks (i.e. >10 Mb)
• Produces up to 1,000,000 individual nanoliter-scale reactions leveraging ~4,000,000 unique 16 bp barcodes
• Generates Linked-Read molecules from >100 kb input molecules
• Enables long-range phasing for whole genome, whole exome, and targeted resequencing applications to detect:
o Haplotypes, which can be directly observed without the need for informatics inference
o Compound heterozygosity
o Balanced and unbalanced structural variant detection
• Rescues short sequencing reads that reside in previously unmappable regions of the genome (frequently ~10% of all reads)
o Provides stand-alone, turn-key analysis pipelines and visualization software fo novice and expert users alike for:
• Sequence read demultiplexing
• Barcode-aware alignment

5. Chromium^TM i7 Multiplex Kit, 96 rxns
• Contains ready-to-use balanced oligonucleotide mix in each well
• Compatible with 10X Genomics Chromium Single Cell Controller
• Compatible with Illumina HiSeq4000, NextSeq, and MiSeq sequencers

Products offered must be essentially equal to the high-throughput mass spectrometer described in this solicitation, which specifically includes the following manufacturer part number, product description and quantity:
1000022 Chromium Chip C Single Cell DNA Kit, 48 rxns 4
1000042 Chromium Chip D Single Cell DNA Kit, 48 rxns 4
1000056 Chromium Single Cell DNA Cell Bead Kit, 16 rxns 12
1000040 Chromium Single Cell DNA Library & Gel Bead Kit, 16 rxns 12
120262 Chromium i7 Multiplex Kit, 96 rxns 1
1000074 Chromium^TM Chip B Single Cell Kit, 16 rxns 1
1000073 Chromium^TM Chip B Single Cell Kit, 48 rxns 4
1000082 Chromium^TM Chip E Single Cell ATAC Kit, 48rxns 4
1000075 Chromium^TM Single Cell 3' GEM, Library & Gel Bead Kit v3, 16 rxns 12
1000092 Chromium^TM Single Cell 3' GEM, Library & Gel Bead Kit v3, 4 rxns 4
1000110 Chromium^TM Single Cell ATAC Library & Gel Bead Kit, 16 rxns 12
1000084 Chromium^TM i7 Multiplex Kit N Set A, 96 rxns 2
1000055 Flowmi Filter, 50 rxns 4

Contractors submitting a response to this Small Business Sources Sought notice shall possess the ability to achieve the salient government essential features of this potential requirement. Specifically, Offerors to this Small Business Sources Sought notice shall document evidence of being able to provide the subject supply that will allow for the essential features described herein to be accomplished.

Delivery/Warranty
Offerors should indicate an estimated delivery time in full after receipt of an order and any other training or warranty or software licenses applicable. Inspection and acceptance will be performed at NCATS located at 9800 Medical Center Drive, Rockville, MD 20852.

CAPABILITY STATEMENTS/INFORMATION SOUGHT
Interested parties are expected to review this notice to familiarize itself with the requirements of this project. Failure to do so will be at your firm's own risk.

Respondents must provide, as part of their response: (a) product, catalog, model, and/or part number(s); (b) product description; (c) all relevant information and documentation that the item(s) offered meets the salient physical, functional, or performance characteristics as specified in this announcement; (d) quantity; (e) shipping, handling, and/or installation instructions, and/or any special delivery conditions after receipt of an order.

Respondents that believe that they are manufacturers or authorized re-sellers of the equipment specified in this announcement must provide, as part of their response: (a) product, catalog, model, and/or part number(s); (b) product description; (c) all relevant information and documentation that the item(s) offered meets the salient physical, functional, or performance characteristics as specified in the purchase description; (d) quantity; (e) estimated price or cost; (f) shipping, handling, and/or installation charges; and delivery date after receipt of order.

The respondent must also provide their DUNS number, organization name, address, point of contact, and size and type of business (e.g., 8(a), HubZone, etc.) pursuant to the applicable NAICS code and any other information that may be helpful in developing or finalizing the acquisition requirements.

The information submitted must be in outline format that addresses each of the elements of this requirement. A cover page and an executive summary may be included but is not required.

The response is limited to ten (10) pages. The 10-page limit does not include the cover page, executive summary, or references, if requested.

The response must include the respondents' technical and administrative points of contact, including names, titles, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses.

Respondents must reference the subject announcement number on all correspondence related to this Small Business Sources Sought notice. The response must be submitted to Hunter Tjugum electronically, at [email protected], and be received prior to the closing date specified in this announcement.

CONCLUDING STATEMENTS
Disclaimer and Important Notes. This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization's qualifications to perform the work. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, a pre-solicitation synopsis and solicitation may be published in Federal Business Opportunities. However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation.

Confidentiality. No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s).

 

Bid Protests Not Available