ELISpot Reader

Tender description

The National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) has a requirement to buy a new ELISpot reader for contract work with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness initiative (CEPI). The contract is to work as part of a centralised testing laboratory network to test clinical samples from Covid-19 Vaccine trials. One of the tests we are required to undertake is a live virus microneutralisation assay in containment level 3 labs. The assay to be used has been transferred from Public Health England, and so that we can compare the assay run at NIBSC with the parent assay at PHE and other labs in the network we need to have an ELISpot reader. The ELISpot reader must be able to read viral plaques stained with a colourimetric stain, in a 96 well plate and to process the raw data in such a way that it can be exported to Softmax Pro software to do the analysis. This data must be comparable to the parent assay for this testing to be valid, so we need to ensure that the reader and software are producing results that allow for this.