National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Contract Management Branch, Room 2230, 6700-B Rockledge Drive, MSC 7612, Bethesda, MD 20892-7612

A -- HEPATITIS C RECOVERY RESEARCH NETWORK SOL RFP NIH-NIAID-DMID-01-16 DUE 121500 POC Janet M. Mattson, Contracting Officer, phone (301) 496-0993; fax (301) 480-5253 WEB: CMB Home Page, http://www.niaid.nih.gov/cgi-shl/cmb/rfps.cfm. E-MAIL: Janet Mattson, jm32u@nih.gov. The Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), has a requirement to establish a collaborative network for clinical research on recovery from hepatitis C virus infection and disease. The HC RRN will carry out a scientific plan to: delineate the factors affecting transmission via percutaneous and permucosal exposure in the health-care worker population; design and conduct a clinical trial to evaluate the role of early therapy in enhancing recovery and improving natural history in the exposed health-care worker population; delineate the mechanisms of recovery and disease progression in concert with the HC RRN trial; and design and conduct clinical trials to evaluate promising new approaches to enhance recovery from infection and/or recovery with therapy. The HC RRN will require the performance of multi-site epidemiological and clinical research that is linked to multi-disciplinary basic research. The HCRRN must be capable of providing the scientific, clinical, technical and administrative expertise and requisite numbers of human subjects. It is the intent of this solicitation to incorporate existing contract and grant efforts as well as to broaden the areas of expertise being applied to understanding mechanisms of recovery. To create a complete picture of the recovery process, it is necessary that both patient characteristics and infection outcome be integrated with multiple basic research approaches focused, for example, on virology, immunology and genetics. The HC RRN will be responsible for evaluating and reporting the composite data that defined the critical features and components of the recovery process. In addition to the BASE project described above, the HC RRN solicitation includes three OPTIONS to design and implement additional clinical trials in acutely infected patients and/or HCV chronic carriers in order to understand the basis of recovery and explore modalities with promise of enhancing the recovery outcome. It is estimated that approximately 20,950 total direct labor hours would be required for the entire five-year period of performance. The RFP will be available on/about July 24, 2000, and may be accessed electronically through the NIAID Contract Management Branch (CMB) Home Page by linking to the following URL: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/cgi-shl/cmb/rfps.cfm. All responsible sources meeting these criteria are encouraged to submit an offer and will be considered by the NIAID. It is anticipated that one (1) incrementally-funded, cost-reimbursement, completion type contract, with OPTIONS, will be awarded for a period of five (5) years, beginning on/about August 1, 2001. Posted 07/07/00 (W-SN472540). (0189)

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