On Jan. 14, 2021, Mammoth Biosciences announced that it had secured a subcontract with MRIGlobal, the prime contractor with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to develop CRISPR-based diagnostics and biosurveillance technologies for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).

The contract goals are to develop two devices: a handheld, disposable point-of-need (PON) device capable of detecting 10 pathogens at once, as well as a lab-based massively multiplexed detection (MMD) platform capable of screening clinical and environmental samples for more than 1,000 targets simultaneously.

Mammoth Biosciences will be the primary subcontractor to MRIGlobal for the PON device and will contribute to the MMD platform along with additional partners.