Development of Lateral Flow Immunoassays (LFI) for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

Defense Biological Product Assurance Office's (DBPAO) mission is to employ best practices in providing the Department of Defense and its partners with a comprehensive collection of biological products that are: thoroughly characterized, of the highest quality, adaptable and traceable from source to application.

The DBPAO is seeking interested parties to develop Lateral Flow Immunoassays (LFIs) for screening for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). No government funding is provided for developmental efforts of this LFI. The DBPAO seeks the development of an easy to use, hand held LFI for detecting SARS-CoV-2 virus in specimens from infected persons or persons suspected of viral exposure as a screening tool. The LFIs will be used with nasopharyngeal swab specimens, just as existing Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests are used. The desired LFIs are expected to be conventional assays where the results are manually read by eye. The DBPAO has no specified assay format or specific reagents to be used.

The DBPAO requires a lot of 5000 LFIs devices for testing and evaluation to be delivered to a contracted third party by 24 April 2020. The DBPAO requires potential submitters to provide appropriate clinical buffer and nasal swabs as part of the kit. For third party testing, the submitters also are required to provide for the other reagents and antigens or positive controls used for their internal testing.

Respondents should contact the Contracting Officer cited below by 15 April 2020 for additional details. The Government Contracting Officer for this notice is Mr. Leo Fratis. Responses should be sent by e-mail to: leo.j.fratis.civ@mail.mil.