Biomaterial Manufacturing Suite in Support of NIH/NIAID and the Global Infectious Disease Research Community

Biomaterial Manufacturing Suite in Support of NIH/NIAID and the Global Infectious
Disease Research Community
PROJECT DIRECTOR: REBECCA BRADFORD, MBA, MS, PMP®
Project Summary
The project is to construct and commission a Biomaterial Manufacturing Suite (BMS) as an
expansion within the High Containment Facility (HCF) currently under design at the American
Type Culture Collection (ATCC). ATCC is a non-profit entity in Manassas, Virginia, serving the
Federal Government for over 50 years through our Federal Solutions (AFS) Division. The
proposed aim of the BMS is to provide modern and reproducible large-scale biomaterial
manufacturing capabilities for priority pathogens. Residing within the soon-to-be-built HCF, the
BMS will offer the National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases (NIH/NIAID) high-throughput and rapid development pipelines for biomaterials of public
health concern, including those of epidemic or pandemic potential. The BMS will directly support
Federal Agencies and the infectious disease research communities by optimizing pathogenic
organisms’ growth, production, and characterization for downstream use. By funding the BMS
within the planned facility, AFS can enhance our support to NIH/NIAID through our ability to offer
large-scale stocks of well-characterized challenge materials at no cost to the research community
through AFS managed programs, including BEI Resources. In turn, this will accelerate infectious
disease research for vaccine and therapeutic development in outbreak situations and serve as
biological standards for developing detection assays.
AFS’ current modular 7,500 ft2 HCF was built in 2007 as a temporary solution to facilitate the
expanding needs of AFS’ Health and Human Services (HHS) programs. The facility is now over-
extended with respect to lifespan, capacity, and capabilities. AFS dutifully maintains the upkeep
of the current HCF to support the extensive NIH/NIAID requests for biological products to advance
our medical countermeasures and arsenal against variants for the recent onslaught of the COVID-
19 pandemic. As a non-profit organization, ATCC has committed several million dollars to design
and construct a new HCF to enhance and modernize our support to NIH. The explicit goal of this
funding is to include the design, construction, and commissioning of the BMS within the facility
footprint to provide critical biological manufacturing capabilities in the biomedical space to
accelerate translational research for vaccine and therapeutic development.

Grant Number: 1C06OD036014-01
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: Rebecca Bradford