The Department of Health and Human Services has awarded American Type Culture Collection a potential 10-year, $250M contract to provide long-term storage resources for biological specimens and potential vaccines and treatments for the novel coronavirus.
HHS said in a notice posted Friday on the beta SAM website that ATCC secured an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity award for the Clinical Studies Network Biological Specimen and Investigational Product Storage Facility initiative.
In a separate notice, HHS said the BSIP contract comes as part of the HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority’s efforts to accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development and expand access to medical countermeasures.
ATCC will provide a centralized storage system to CSN and support inventory and tracking management activities for investigational product samples as well as clinical and nonclinical specimens.
The contractor will also handle the transport of BSIP resources for future use and archiving purposes in addition to transferring legacy products and specimens currently located in temporary storage equipment.
Work under the IDIQ contract is slated to take place throughout a five-year base period and five one-year options.
ATCC is headquartered in Manassas, Va., and offers biological materials organization tools and services to support the acquisition, preservation and distribution of reference materials such as cell lines and microorganisms to support scientific and global health research.