The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) through the Defense Sciences Office released two Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA) seeking new diagnostic capabilities. DARPA is interested in new devices to deal with unmet clinical needs as well as to decrease the time to design, manufacture, and distribute new assays when future needs arise.
The general name for the two programs is “Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics”. The first solicitation in the program “Diagnostics on Demand—Point of Care” (DARPA-BAA-11-38) focuses specifically on developing point-of-care highly multiplexed and reconfigurable devices. DARPA wants to significantly advance point-of-care diagnostics and develop capabilities that far exceed current technologies.
Very often service members in deployed settings have limited access to healthcare therefore new methods and devices are needed to address critical conditions on-site. Very often select critical diagnostic tests may need to be performed using a rapid test carried by soldiers in limited resource settings.
The second solicitation “Diagnostics on Demand—Limited Resource Settings” (DARPA-BAA-11-39) is envisioned by DARPA as an interdisciplinary research effort to develop diagnostic capabilities that are deployable with military personnel in limited resource settings.
This effort will develop and demonstrate clinically valid devices for the detection of multiple critical analytes in relevant self-collected biospecimens. The additional goal is to develop diagnostic devices that can be operated by unskilled users in these settings.
Proposal abstracts are due for BAA-11-38 on April 12, 2011 and for BAA-11-39, the due date for abstracts is April 14, 2011. Full proposals for BAA-11-38 are due May 17, 2011 and for BAA-11-39, the date is May 19, 2011. The contact for both funding announcements is Dr. Daniel Wattendorf, at either DARPA-BAA-11-39@darpa.mil or DARPA-BAA-11-38@darpa.mil.
To view the funding announcements in detail, go to either www.grants.gov or www.fbo.gov.
