ICx Technologies [ICXT] won a $4.9 million research and development contract from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology Directorate for Phase IIb of the Detect to Protect program, which is designed to develop rapid sensors that can quickly alert authorities to take actions to limit the exposure to a biological attack. In Phase IIb ICx will complete prototype development for a system that will be able to detect and identify a list of 10 bio-terrorism threats with a response time of 15 minutes or less. The Detect to Protect program was formerly called the Instantaneous Bio-Aerosol Detector Systems, or IBADS, program begun in 2004. The award marks the third contract for ICx under the program. ICx says its process is completely automated and involves the extraction of DNA and RNA from an environmental sample, purification of the DNA and RNA, amplification via polymerase chain reaction techniques, and identification of the threat specific DNA sequences. The technology can also concurrently perform immunoassays to detect toxins in less than 10 minutes.
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