NEW YORK – BioMérieux subsidiary BioFire Defense has secured an order-dependent contract worth up to $18.8 million from the US Department of Defense to provide support for a military-use version of the firm's multiplex PCR instrument for infectious disease testing.
In a listing of recently awarded contracts on its website, the DoD said that BioFire Defense, based in Salt Lake City, will provide maintenance and other support for BioFire's Next Generation Diagnostic System (NGDS) 1 through Jan. 31, 2029. A BioFire Defense official said in an email that the contract involves a version of the FilmArray 2.0 instrument that was redesigned for use by the Department of Defense and incorporates a different computer system compared to its commercial counterpart.
The company is also providing the department with custom BioFire FilmArray test panels that were developed under the Next Generation Diagnostic System program. The DoD said the work locations and funding will be determined with each order.
The new contract comes 10 years after the DoD awarded BioFire, along with two other companies, $23.1 million to develop the NGDS platform.