What we learned at BARDA’s 2022 Industry Day Conference

Each year the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) holds an annual Industry Day conference showcasing successful industry partnerships and providing insight into future federal interagency priorities to support product development to address public health threats. BARDA and their interagency partners provide nondilutive funding to support advanced research and development of medical countermeasures (MCMs). Messaging from the BARDA Director and Leadership team heavily emphasized a priority for innovation and threat agnostic medical countermeasure development. And once again, BARDA Industry Day 2022 confirmed continued bipartisan congressional support of BARDA’s new funding initiatives.

Each year subsequent to BARDA Industry Day, the BDO Biodefense team provides a series of detailed insights from the conference leveraging our collective BARDA experience. In the coming weeks we will delve into each of the key topics in greater detail to advise the life science community on the benefit of partnering with BARDA, including new partnership opportunities and new mechanisms for engagement with BARDA and its interagency partners. Today we will be providing a snapshot of recent changes to the Broad Agency Announcements (BAA and EZ BAA), the primary mechanism whereby BARDA provides non-dilutive funding to its industry partners and a synopsis of the strategic priority of developing threat agnostic MCMs.

BAA Updates

The BARDA BAA includes Areas of Interest which are areas in which the agency is seeking solutions from industry to counter identified public health threats. The BAA has been updated to include Area of Interest 3.2 for Treatment of Multi-drug Resistant (MDR) Fungal Infections and addition of Area of Interest 7.9 for Threat Agnostic Diagnostics. This supports BARDA’s pivot to resume expanding its portfolio to address Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) threats in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic. The BAA can be found in full text on SAM.gov. All submissions in response to this BARDA BAA must be submitted to the BARDA Digital Resources (BDR) Portal (https://bdr.hhs.gov/). Submissions are due Dec 15, 2022.

The EZ BAA, which services funding opportunities under the BARDA DRIVe Program up to $750K now has a follow-on phase than can fund solutions up to $20M to support continued development towards commercialization. Submission dates are rolling based on Areas of Interest. (https://drive.hhs.gov/partner.html)  

Threat Agnostic MCMs

BARDA has identified threat agnostic MCMs as a key priority for FY23 and has indicated that funding is available to support advanced development.  Threat agnostic MCMs are products that may be used to treat an unknown threat in the first days, weeks or months of an emergency response. Their capability is especially valuable in public health emergencies as they address multiple threats and can be used until a pathogen is identified and targeted MCMs are developed.

BARDA has requested organizations with products or technologies that could be considered threat agnostic to reach out and request a TechWatch, which is the first step in the process toward securing non-dilutive funding for product development. Offerors are always encouraged to participate in the TechWatch program prior to any White Paper submission. Priorities include host-based threat agnostic MCMs against CBRN threats and development of threat agnostic diagnostics. 

BDO’s Biodefense team has demonstrated experience in evaluating product portfolios and providing strategic guidance on alignment with BARDA and interagency priorities. Please don’t hesitate to contact a member of our team for more information or to schedule a meeting to discuss how we can help navigate federal funding opportunities.