Inactive

AMENDED SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE The Department of Veterans Affairs, Greater Los Angeles, is seeking an equipment of laboratory needs for live-cell imaging 2D and 3D culture of fallopian tube isolated ce... AMENDED SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE The Department of Veterans Affairs, Greater Los Angeles, is seeking an equipment of laboratory needs for live-cell imaging 2D and 3D culture of fallopian tube isolated cells and organoids. SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS: ****This equipment will NOT be connected to the VA network**** The instrument must allow remote access by an unlimited number of users to set up and monitor experiments as well as analyze and export data, including images and movies in JPEG and CSV formats. The instrument must be able to operate inside a tissue culture incubator. The instrument size shall not exceed the following dimensions: Width 17 in, Depth 13 in, Height 13 in and a maximum weight of 40 lbs. The instrument must perform measurements without having to remove cells from incubator for significant amounts of time: The instrument shall function entirely within a standard tissue culture incubator and shall therefore maintain the exact environment as cells growing in normal culture conditions. The instrument must operate between 20 to 95% relative humidity, 4%-6% CO2 and 36-38 degrees Celsius. Active mold-reduction technology UV Lamps shall be inside the instrument to reduce risk of mold contamination. The instrument shall keep the optics stationary and move the plate for imaging to reduce calibration and accuracy issues. The stage shall move to exact user defined positions within the vessel. Instruments that move the optics have a higher risk of calibration errors and malfunction due to misalignment and humidity exposure and when in the incubator. Open stage access must be available to access the stage freely for applications involving microfluidics, pumps, or perform media change without disturbing the sample. Instruments requiring sample holder trays or doors to access the microscope are not viable options for consideration and limit the user s application range. The instrument must have 4x, 10x, and 20x long working distance objectives. All lenses shall be user changeable on a fixed turret, for consistent lens calibration and stability. Fixed lens option provides greater reproducibility when imaging the same position over long time courses. The instrument must support a wide range of interchangeable tissue culture vessels including but not limited to T-Flask, 35/60/100 mm petri dish, microslides, and well plates. Common assays shall include but are not limited to apoptosis, proliferation, fluorescent cell counting, spheroid/organoid analysis, scratch assays, and transfection. The instrument must be compatible with the 64 Bit Windows 10 Pro. Intel Core i5, 6 operating system. Storage capacity shall not be limited and can be increased in increments of 4TB to fit any space requirements. The Datapath must be assignable before image capture and is not limited to any single exporting method including USB 2.0, External drive, and internal storage. The instrument shall have optics and filters to measure GFP (446-488 nm excitation, 500-550 nm emission), RFP (532-554 nm excitation, 580 nm Longpass filter emission, DAPI (370-410 nm excitation, 429-475 nm emission) fluorescent proteins. DAPI must be available as it acts as a key nuclear marker for cell identification, quantification, viability, and other studies. The instrument must include 4 independent spectra channels to capture images of live-cells, 3 distinct fluorescent channels (blue, green, orange) and brightfield with the capability of measuring 7 different classes of fluorescent proteins (blue, cyan, green, yellow, orange, red, and far-red). Additional, live-cell imaging of fluorescent probes extends from the UV to the far-red including commonly used markers, e.g., Hoechst, DAPI, DRAQ5, Yo-PRO-1, MitoTracker, LysoTracker, CellROX, Rhodamine dyes, and others to interrogate cell function, cell health status, proliferation, and program cell death. The instrument must have software to analyze growth curves, scratch assays, wound healing, cell counting, fluorescent intensity, and spheroid area/diameter/volume. Image stitching and Z stack capabilities must be available. This is important for imaging spheroids/organoids in our project. The vendor/contractor shall ensure equipment specifications are listed in under salient characteristics. Security clearance is not required. Installation of the system will be provided by certified representative, however no access to VA network will be needed at any time. The system will not be connected to the VA network. It is a stand-alone system used for scientific computing. This is a Sources Sought synopsis only. The purpose of this synopsis is to gain knowledge of potential qualified sources and their size classification (large business, small business, 8(a), SDVOSB, etc.), relative to NAICS code 334516. Responses to this synopsis will be used by the Government to make appropriate acquisition decisions. Based on responses to this synopsis, the Government may issue this RFQ as a Brand Name or Equal requirement in accordance with VAAR Clause 852.211-73 on eBuy or Fed Biz Ops. This notice is not a request for competitive proposals; however, any responsible source who believes it is capable of meeting the requirement and who is the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), authorized dealer, authorized distributor or authorized reseller of all the items listed above, may submit a capability statement to the contracting office than no later than Tuesday, April 13, 2021, 12:00 PM EST. Interest/capability statements may be sent to Rachael Talbott Rachael.Talbott@va.gov. No telephone responses will be accepted. A determination not to compete the proposed requirement based upon the responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government.