Development and Maintenance of an Aged Rodent Tissue Bank

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) is seeking a contractor to develop and maintain an Aged Rodent Tissue Bank, which serves as a resource for scientists conducting research in the biology of aging. The bank collects, stores, and distributes biospecimens (tissues and fluids) from rodents to investigators. The contractor will be responsible for maintaining the current biospecimen inventory, collecting and storing new biospecimens, generating new tissue arrays, distributing biospecimens to investigators, and maintaining a comprehensive digital inventory of the bank assets. * The contract will be for a period of 1 year with 4 option years * The anticipated level of effort is approximately 3 FTE in year 1 and 3 FTE per year in years 2-5 * The bank currently comprises approximately 40,000 frozen samples, 2,000 tissue blocks, and small sets of tissue arrays and tissue array slides * The contractor will be required to maintain the bank's inventory, including frozen tissues from three strains of mice and three strains of rats, and non-standard tissues can be collected on demand * The contractor will also be required to maintain and add to the bibliography associated with the distributed biospecimens