Data Coordinating Centers for Cancer Epidemiology Consortia of Rare Cancers

Contracting Office Address Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Office of Acquisitions, 6120 Executive Blvd. EPS Room 6074, Rockville, MD, 20852, UNITED STATES Description The National Cancer Institute (NCI), Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS), Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program (EGRP) plans to support a model Data Coordinating Center (DCC) for Cancer Epidemiology Consortia of Rare Cancers. This demonstration project will serve as the foundation to develop best practices for consortia DCC for rare cancer outcomes. This acquisition will be processed in accordance with simplified acquisition procedures as stated in FAR Part 13.106-1(b)(1). The North American Industry Classification System code is 541990 and the business size standard is $7.0 million. Only one award will be made as a result of this solicitation. This will be awarded as a firm fixed price type contract. Period of Performance shall be from award through twelve (12) months. It has been determined there are no opportunities to acquire green products or services for this procurement. The National Cancer Institute (NCI), Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS), Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program (EGRP) supports national and international research consortia focusing on cancer interdisciplinary and translational research. Currently, EGRP supports approximately 60 cancer epidemiology consortia (CECs), 25% of which focus on the study of rare cancers (RCs). In 2005, the National Institute of Cancer (NCI) and National Institute of Health (NIH) Office of Rare Diseases sponsored a joint workshop to stimulate research on understudied RCs. These are defined as cancers with an incidence less than 15 per 100,000 or 40,000 or fewer cases per year, (http://epi.grants.cancer.gov/Conference2/). RCs include, but are not limited to: pancreatic, brain, ovarian, testicular, and esophageal cancer. In order to achieve statistically informative sample sizes to support research to address the study of the etiology of these tumors, collaborations among large numbers of national and international groups, in the form of CECs, are essential. Each CEC may include multiple member institutions from academia, hospitals, and other research settings. CECs can significantly contribute to RCs research by supporting pooled analyses or meta-analyses with sample sizes that are large enough to achieve significant results, promote spinoff research projects, and yield faster "translation" of results into clinical and public health applications. However, with an array of study locations, collection of data within the CEC is often not standardized, processes may vary, and data items within the same domains may be collected through different questionnaires. Before consortia-wide analysis can begin, efficient and accurate data management needs to be achieved to support pooling and harmonization of heterogeneous data. Therefore, an essential need for the execution of CEC-based consortia research is the development of a state-of-the-art DCC, to collect, harmonize, maintain, clean, secure, and provide access to data collected across the many consortia participating sites.DCCs are currently not widely available for RCs CECs due to lack of established guidelines and standard operating procedures (SOPs) and lack of funding. As a consequence, data cleaning, harmonization and pooling are often conducted by consortia in an "ad hoc", study-by-study manner. Development of a model and SOPs for the establishment of DCC for rare cancers and development and dissemination of related SOPs will contribute to greatly expedite consortia-related research. The contractor shall perform the following tasks: Project Management Plan; Project Kickoff Meeting; Collection of CEC descriptive data and meta-data; Establishment of CEC repository of descriptive data; Implementation of data harmonization across the consortium; Development and maintenance of database for harmonized data and related meta-data; Data security and privacy; Data access to descriptive data, harmonized data, and meta-data for consortium-approved investigators and scientific community; maintain and update of a multi-level access web-site for communication of all consortia activities; Database administration; Development of Standard operating procedures and publication of guidelines for CEC DCCs; and, Set up Data Sharing Plan. The Contractor shall provide suitable space and equipment to permit their staff to perform off-Government site file maintenance and storage. Potential offerors may request a copy of the solicitation from Terry Galloway, Contract Specialist via electronic mail at gallowaytl@mail.nih.gov or fax (301) 402-4513. Interested parties shall include the name of company; complete mailing address; point of contacts, phone, fax numbers, and email address; company DUNS number and business size. All questions shall be in writing and may be addressed to the aforementioned individual noted above. No collect calls will be accepted. In order to receive an award, contractors must be registered and have valid certification in the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) and the Online Representations and Certifications Applications (ORCA) via the SAM.gov website. Reference: RFQ-NCI-120162-TG on all correspondence.