Whole Exome Sequencing (WES), RNA sequencing and DNA Methylation sequencing

This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in FAR 12.6 as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation and a separate written solicitation will not be issued. This solicitation number is NIH-NICHD-20-042 and is issued as a Request for Quotation (RFQ). The solicitation/contract will include all applicable provisions and clauses in effect through Federal Acquisition Circular 2020-04. The North American Industry Classification (NAICS) Code is 541380 and the business size standard is $16.5M. However, this solicitation is not set aside for small business. It is the intent of The National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) to purchase Whole Exome Sequencing (WES), RNA sequencing and DNA Methylation Sequencing services on samples from racially/ethnically diverse breast cancer patients from Psomagen, Inc., 1330 Piccard Drive, Rockville, MD 20850 pursuant to 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1)Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. The proposed contractor, Psomagen is the only contractor that has the experience using the advanced kits we need for the sequencing services. The proposed contractor utilizes a cutting-edge kit, SureSelect V6+ UTR for whole exome sequencing, which offers the advantage of recruiting a more targeted region of 89 Mb, including untranslated regions (UTR) that are responsible for regulatory gene pathways. They also use dual index rather than single index runs, which has additional read capacity while sequencing and generates more accurate data than using single index. For RNA sequencing, the Library TruSeq Stranded Total RNA kit will be used. For DNA Methylation Sequencing, the contractor will use SureselectXT Methyl-Seq with 60M read pairs for library preparation so that it generates more than 18 Gb data even at lower amounts of DNA input. Furthermore, the contractor utilizes NovaSeq6000 S4 150bp paired end as the sequencing platform. We need to stay with the same gene sequencing services to be able to consistently describe in scientific manuscripts the quality control, collection and sequencing protocol used and to be able to make valid comparisons across batches of samples. This approach enhances scientific reproducibility and helps ensure successful peer-review of scientific manuscripts. SEE ATTACHMENT FOR SCOPE OF WORK