Emerging infectious disease hotspots are expected to increase globally within the next 50 years. While technology has advanced agnostic lab-based testing, agnostic sample preservation still relies on cold chain transport that can be difficult to acquire and often unreliable in remote, austere, and contested environments. Thus, samples critical to force health protection can be significantly degraded upon lab receipt. The AMPHORA program seeks to develop a portable, cold chain free system that can preserve any microbe (bacteria, fungus, virus) from any sample, environment, or clinical setting, increasing the DoD’s ability to surveil for emerging threats and protect force health and readiness. The AMPHORA program will decouple sample preservation from cold chains, enabling cold chain-free storage and viability maintenance in austere and remote environments. AMPHORA systems will preserve multiple samples in parallel, and ensure samples are compatible with downstream analyses. Preservation systems will be rigorously tested using contrived and realworld samples to demonstrate real-world capability and generalizability.
Deadlines:
o Proposal Abstract Due Date and Time: August 24, 2023, 4:00 PM ET
o Full Proposal Due Date and Time: October 4, 2023, 4:00 PM ET
All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal that shall be considered by DARPA. Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Small Businesses, Small Disadvantaged Businesses and Minority Institutions are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals; however, no portion of this announcement will be set aside for these organizations’ participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of this research for exclusive competition among these entities.
