Laboratory, optical and precision equipments (excl. glasses)

Tender description

VEAT notice to alert the market of the University of Birmingham intention to award a contract for NanoString’s nCounter FlexLM platform via a sole source procedure and not through a competitive OJEU tender procedure. Understanding tissue microenvironments and the role of specific cell types, receptors, ligands and transcriptional signatures is critical to define routes of disease pathogenesis, factors underly prognosis or therapy response, and also viable strategies for therapeutic intervention. UoB is seeking new technologies that allow highly multiplex and quantitative analysis of candidate targets/biomarkers and the ability to resolve these spatially. This would allow fundamental research groups and collaborative interactions with external collaborators/industry partners to answer key questions regarding biological mechanisms underpinning disease pathogenesis, patient prognosis and response to therapy, catalysing novel targeted therapy development. Accepted methods for assessing spatial distribution of protein/nucleic acid targets in tissues include immunohistochemistry (IHC), in situ hybridisation (ISH), and imaging mass spectrometry. However, these require multiple tissue sections for analysis of a high number of biomarkers, increasing variability and requiring more samples. IHC and ISH are both only semi-quantitative and also have limited multiplexing capability. Mass spectrometry imaging allows quantification but has limited spatial resolution. Flow cytometry is powerful for liquid analyses, but has limited multiplexing capability and requires tissue disruption, so spatial information is lost. The University has recently acquired a ‘digital spatial profiling’ platform providing highly multiplexed analysis of nucleic acid and protein targets in tissues, with high specificity and spatial resolution. The University will now procure a NanoString nCounter platform, through a sole source route and not a competitive tender via OJEU as this instrument is the only instrument which provides the University with the following capability: — uniquely ability to ‘readout’ and samples from the University’s Nanostring GeoMx ‘digital spatial profiling’ platform, involving detecting and quantitating Nanostring’s proprietary fluorescent hexanucleotide tags within samples from the GeoMx. The Nanostring nCounter is the only machine on the market that can act as a detection platform for the GeoMx digital spatial profiler, — in combination with the GeoMx, the nCounter will enable: — high multiplexing capability (≤800 markers), — simultaneous detection of protein or nucleic acid expression in situ, with high specificity and spatial resolution, — quantitative characterisation of precious clinical samples, ensuring maximum information from single tissue sections. NanoString’s nCounter FLEX LM platform is to be procured through a sole source route and not tendered via OJEU as this instrument is unique in the market in enabling, in combination with the Nanostring GeoMx platform already acquired, all of the following: High level of multiplexing – simultaneous multiplexed detection of >800 proteins/nucleic acid analytes by DSP compared to a maximum of 8 by IHC. Greater use of precious clinical samples by analysing 800 biomarkers from a single tissue slice, getting more information from less tissue. Future development of this platform will allow >1000 markers. Multiplex mRNA and protein simultaneously, with spatial information for each marker. Quantitative. 1 count corresponds directly to 1 molecule, giving high sensitivity and quantitative accuracy. Can detect down to single cell level (~10uM), with potential to identify numerous tissue disease drivers. Flexibility of fresh, frozen and FFPE tissue, pre-clinical (cell lines/complex cell models) and clinical (tissue) application. This VEAT notice is alerting the market of the University’s intention to award a contract via a sole source procedure and not via a competitive tender via OJEU. The University intends to award a contract for the above once a 10 day standstill period has ended. The 10 day standstill period will commence from the publication of this notice in OJEU.