Some (Old) News from SAIC-Frederick

Back in October I was forwarded an advanced copy of the SAIC-Frederick Newsletter, which I never got around to blogging.  They are trying to communicate more with the community and if I can help here,  I will do my part.  If you’d like to do your part, you should consider joining the Fort Detrick Alliance.  The annual Gala is coming up Tuesday, December 8th at 5:30 PM at Musket Ridge.  It appears the event is booked full, but I have a Tee Time at noon that day (in the event the weather cooperates, meaning it’s above 40 deg F).  Let me know if you’d like to join me.

Anyways, I missed out on a couple good stories from Ft Detrick and SAIC-Frederick, like the ground breaking for the first 330,000 square foot facility at NCI-Riverside Park on November 12th.  About 370 employees will move from the NCI-Frederick campus to Riverside when the building opens in early 2011. An additional 200 are expected to be hired through 2016.

And did you know that the “Stimulus” is sticking SAIC-Frederick right in the arm?  According to the Newsletter (page 2), the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) funding will increase SAIC-Frederick’s contract with NCI will boost the budget from $300 million in 2006 to almost $750 million in 2010?  Amazing.

Speaking of boosts, there is also a great report on work done BDP (page 7).  In “A PhaseIII Randomized Trial of the Chimeric Anti-GD2 Antibodych14.18 with GM-CSF and IL2 as Immunotherapy FollowingDose-intensive Chemotherapy for High-Risk Neuroblastoma: Children’s Oncology Group (COG) Study ANBL0032.” J ClinOncol 27:15s, 2009.  The Biopharmaceutical Development Program (BDP) at NCI-Frederick is manufacturing ch14.18, a monoclonal antibody being used in clinical trials for children with neuroblastoma.  I knew a 12 year old kid from my karate school who died from this last year.  An awful condition which is a target of many NCI programs.   Appropriately,  it’s situated right behind the Toys-R-Us warehouse off 85 South.  You should check out the extensive list of other Projects they’re working on.  Most of them are collaborations with other research centers, but they were born in little old FredCoBio.

BioBeers November ’09

What a great turn-out last week for BioBeers!  TalentWrx Professional Staffing, Tyler-Donegan and ImQuest (the Official Chicken wing sponsor of BioBeers).  It was a record for attendance with 123 people (and probably more since everyone wasn’t drinking beer).

I only took a few pictures.  Click on the picture below to open the Web Album on Picasa:

I am also glad to announce that I know the next sponsor is going to be the Battelle National Biodefense Institute (BNBI), the group running the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC).  And don’t listen to the the trolls (instead subscribe to the BPSDB blog), there are jobs and plenty of them coming soon at NBACC and most don’t require wearing a bunny suit every day! They have a number up already on their Careers site and they want to use BioBeers as a recruiting tool. So stay tuned, as I am working with them now to set a date in mid-January.

 

A lot going on in Fredcobio

It’s been a busy in Fredcobio.  SIAC-Frederick signs a deal with Sporian for Remote HIV detection

SAIC-Frederick, Sporian Microsystems Collaborate On Device For HIV Screening in Remote Areas

FREDERICK, Md., Nov. 4, 2009 – SAIC-Frederick, Inc., a contractor to the National Cancer Institute, has entered into a three-way research collaboration with Sporian Microsystems Inc. of Lafayette, Colo., and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) centering on a hand-held device for HIV testing that could potentially be used to improve screening in remote areas.

The collaboration is part of the National Cancer Institute’s Advanced Technology Partnerships Initiative, which aims to speed up the translation of basic research into technologies and treatments for patients with cancer and AIDS. SAIC-Frederick, as prime contractor at the National Cancer Institute at Frederick, is facilitating ATPI partnerships for the government.

HIV/AIDS continues to have a disproportionate impact on populations in low socioeconomic and rural areas. Therefore, SAIC-Frederick, Sporian, and the FDA will focus on developing a hand-held device to address the prevailing need for a sensitive, point-of-care (POC) assay that can detect evolving strains of HIV early in the course of infection in resource-limited settings. POC technologies that facilitate early diagnosis often lead to improved treatment and facilitate epidemiological surveillance and prevention of diseases that are of particular importance in these areas.

The proposed diagnostic assay is especially suitable for those areas that lack the refrigeration facilities, stable electrical power, highly trained personnel, and clinical laboratory infrastructure required by many current tests and devices.

“For optimal use in health disparity settings, it is also important for POC diagnostic systems to be rapid, simple to use and cost-effective, but not sacrifice diagnostic accuracy,” said Dr. Michael Usrey of Sporian. “The objective of this partnership is to combine the assay expertise of SAIC and FDA with Sporian’s optoelectronics interrogation, signal processing, algorithms and packaging to produce an effective, low-cost POC device.”

About Sporian Microsystems

Sporian Microsystems, Inc. is an aggressive sensors and packaging company. Sporian develops, markets, manufactures, and sells novel sensors, multiple sensor-suites, sensor-subsystems and sensor data-loggers. These systems deliver several key features, including ruggedness, small size, low power consumption and low cost. Sporian’s patented BioOverseer® sensor architecture provides specific and sensitive serum pathogen detection in a portable point-of-care (POC) package. For more information, call 303-516-9075 x19 or visit Sporian’s website at www.sporian.com.

There are more opportunities for contract work at the Fort.  An RFP posted for  S10-072 RFP Package issued 11-6-09.  I know someone out there could do this one.

Today, it was announced that Qiagen Acquired SABiosciences for $90M.  Wow.  I hope to see a few SAB people at Biobeers on Friday.  We can cry in our beer together.

Which reminds me, BioBeers is this Friday at 4:30 PM at the Flying Dog Brewery on Wedgwood Blvd.  Be there or be square.  Our sponsors this time are the Tyler Companies and Talent Works Scientific Staffing.

Do please try to RSVP.  We need to give our Friends at Flying Dog a heads up for how many people to expect and I want to have enough chow.  As always, ImQuest, official wing sponsor of BioBeers, will bring some wings.  We’ll get some sandwiches from Frisco’s, too.

Expecting a full house again.  If anyone has a last minute scientific presentation to give , please let me know.

 

 

LavaAmp Launched Coast to Coast

One reason I have been lame in the blogging department is that I have been working on the LavaAmp™ project.  After SciFoo camp last year, I was asked by Joseph Jackson and Guido Nuñez-Mujica if I  could help them licences this device from Texas A&M.

Guido is from Venezuela and is most interested in infectious disease testng in 3rd world, remote applications.  This is a talk Guido gave at Google shortly before SciFoo camp:

After nearly a year of negotiating with the TAMU tech transfer office (some day I’ll blog about University Tech Transfer offices stifling Innovation and commercialization) in the past 6 weeks we recruited Rob Carlson and Rik Wehbring from Biodesic and a the engineering prototype is built.

A more technical description from Robs blog post:

“The LavaAmp is based on the convective PCR thermocycler demonstrated by Agrawal et al, which has been licensed from Texas A&M University to Gahaga.  Under contract from Gahaga, Biodesic reduced the material costs and power consumption of the device.  We started by switching from the aluminum block heaters in the original device (expensive) to thin film heaters printed on plastic.  A photo of the engineering prototype is below (inset shows a cell phone for scale).  PCR reagents, as in the original demonstration, are contained in a PFTE loop slid over the heater core.  Only one loop is shown for demonstration purposes, though clearly the capacity is much larger.”

So we’re off and running.  Joseph is out at BilPil in San Diego this weekend with the device and hoping to get a little mention in at iGEM Jamboree in Boston, although it’s hard to be in two places at once.

A bit more from Synthesis:  ”The existing prototype has three independently controllable heating zones that can reach 100C.  The device can be powered either by a USB connection or an AC adapter (or batteries, if desired).  The USB connection is primarily used for power, but is also used to program the temperature setpoints for each zone.  The design is intended to accommodate additional measurement capability such as real-time fluorescence monitoring.

We searched hard for the right materials to form the heaters and thin film conductive inks are a definite win.  They heat very quickly and have almost zero thermal mass.  The prototype, for example, uses approximately 2W whereas the battery-operated device in the original publication used around 6W.

What we have produced is an engineering prototype to demonstrate materials and controls — the form factor will certainly be different in production.  It may look something like a soda can, though I think we could probably fit the whole thing inside a 100ml centrifuge tube.”

And Attila over at PIMM also beat me to the blog punch.

I need to put together the press release and finish plans for BioBeers on Friday,  put more marketing material in our Business Plan and write up a new proposal for amniotic tissue skin grafts this morning.  Gaining momentum…..