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Development contract awarded for biological threat detection.
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ICx Technologies
: 30 April, 2008 (Application Story) |
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Detect to Protect project development contract awarded to ICx Technologies under the banner of the Department of Homeland Security for the detection of biological and chemical threats. |
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ICx Technologies has won a $4.9 million, Phase IIb research and development contract under the Department of Homeland Security's ‘Detect to Protect' project, which was previously called the IBADS program. The project is designed to develop rapid sensors that can influence immediate actions to limit exposure to an attack involving biological agents.
This is the third such award ICx has won in conjunction with this program. The objective of Phase IIb is to finish prototype development for a system that will be able to detect and identify a list of ten bioterrorism threats, including bacteria, viruses, and toxins, all with a response time of 15 minutes or less.
The process is completely automated and includes the efficient extraction of DNA and RNA from an environmental sample, purification of the DNA/RNA, amplification via multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques, and identification of the threat-specific DNA sequences. The platform can also concurrently perform immunoassays to detect toxins in less than ten minutes.
The technical approach is particularly amenable to portable battery-power operation. In addition, the system can be expanded to cover up to 50 different threats.
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