NP/EFSA/NIF/2023/02 Update and maintenance of the preDQ – software tool for peptide binding prediction to HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8

Published:
Deadline:
Expired
  • Budget: 58.000 € 
  • Approximate launch date: end of October 2023 
  • Deadline to register interest: 19/10/2023 

Background:

EFSA has recently published an external scientific report (here) and a software tool (here) to assess the capacity of novel proteins to cause celiac disease. The request was triggered following the publication of the EFSA GMO Panel guidance document on allergenicity (here), where a HLA-DQ peptide binding approach should be applied to assess the capacity of novel proteins in food and feed to cause celiac disease under specific circumstances. 

The software tool is now publicly available and is serving applicants of the GMO domain to assess the safety assessment of proteins. Updates and maintenance are needed. Furthermore, applicants of GMO domain will continue testing the tool and it will need additional revisions of the tool.

Objectives:

The main objective of the contract resulting from this procurement procedure is to maintain, update and revise the software preDQ (here) tool currently available at the R4EU interface.

Selection criteria -Technical and professional capacity:

  • Requirement 1: extensive and demonstrable experience in the field of protein bioinformatics linked to the subject of the call, i.e. celiac disease and software development.
  • Requirement 2: at least one expert in the area of protein bioinformatics and software development, being a senior research-scientist with at least 5 years of experience.

  • Requirement 3: the team of experts involved in the project must have overall an excellent level of spoken and written Standard English.

If you are interested in this procedure please send an email within the deadline to efsaprocurement [at] efsa.europa.eu (EFSAprocurement[at]efsa[dot]europa[dot]eu) quoting the reference of the procedure and specifying the following:

  • your name/organisation’s name and address.
  • whether you participate as a physical person or an organisation/private company.