ICx Technologies announced this week that it has landed a Department of Homeland Security contract to develop sensors that could be used in the event of a biological attack.
The contract, worth $4.9 million, is a Phase IIb research and development program inside the DHS "Detect to Protect" project, which was formerly known as the IBADS program. It is the third time ICx has landed a contract with that program.
The R&D work will see ICx Technologies work to finish a sensor project that could detect ten bioterror threats, including bacteria, viruses and toxins. The goal for the project is to develop rapid sensors that could identify such threats within 15 minutes.
According to ICx, the process will be fully automated in involves DNA and RNA extraction from the sample, and then identification of the "threat-specific DNA sequences." In announcing its contract win, ICx said the system will concurrently perform an immunoassays test in less than 10 minutes.
