What Belongs in a Wetware RFQ

A wetware RFQ is a written request for quotation for living material — cells, engineered tissue, or a cell-device assembly — that specifies the deliverable precisely enough that two different suppliers quoting against it produce numbers you can actually compare.

That last clause is the entire test. An RFQ that produces two quotes you cannot compare has failed, no matter how detailed it looks.

Why wetware RFQs go wrong

Requests for living material fail differently from requests for parts. Four failure modes account for most of it.

The unit is ambiguous. “One million cells” means total cells at freeze to one supplier and viable cells post-thaw to another. The vendor quoting the first convention looks cheaper while delivering less. This is the single most common reason two quotes are not comparable, and it is invisible unless you specify the convention.

The acceptance criterion is missing. Without a stated test and a stated threshold, there is nothing to reject against. “Functional neurons” is not a criterion. A mean firing rate, measured on a named platform, at a named day in vitro, is.

The scope boundary is undrawn. Are media, supplements, coating, shipping and import documentation in or out? One supplier includes a media kit and quotes higher; another excludes it and quotes lower; you conclude the second is cheaper.

The delivery format is assumed. Frozen vial, plated and live, or fixed changes the price, the lead time, the shipping method and the risk allocation more than almost any other single field, and buyers routinely leave it implicit.

The field checklist

#	Field	Why it changes the quote	Leave it out and
1	Deliverable, in one sentence	Anchors everything else. Forces you to decide whether you are buying material, a service, or an object	Suppliers quote different things and you compare a product against a project
2	Quantity and the counting convention	Volume drives unit price sharply. In our recorded price data a single supplier’s own price per million fell by roughly 46 percent moving from a 1M to a 5M vial	You cannot normalise. See the ambiguity above
3	Species and source	Human, rodent, immortalised and iPSC-derived differ by an order of magnitude in cost	You get the supplier’s default, which is whatever they have stock of
4	Cell type and subtype	Glutamatergic versus GABAergic, ventricular versus atrial, primary versus iPSC-derived are different products at different prices	Quotes cover different cells
5	Genotype, disease background, isogenic control	Disease and reporter lines carry a premium and have lumpy availability. Isogenic control pairs are stocked and priced separately by each vendor	You receive a mutant line with no matched control, discovered at the point of experiment design
6	Purity specification and the markers it is against	Purity is only meaningful against named markers and a named method	“High purity” is unfalsifiable
7	Viability specification, method and timepoint	See post-thaw viability. Method and timepoint move the number more than supplier choice does	You compare a trypan blue number against an AO/PI number
8	Delivery format	Cryopreserved vial, plated and live, cast into a device, or fixed. Determines shipping mode, shelf life and who owns maturation risk	The largest single unpriced variable in your RFQ
9	Geometry and mechanical interface (tissue and devices only)	Dimensions, anchor type, post spacing, cross-section. This is usually the only genuinely custom element and it drives tooling cost	You get the supplier’s fixed plate geometry, which may be fine, but you did not choose it
10	Functional acceptance criteria	The test, the threshold, the instrument, the timepoint. Converts a purchase into an enforceable specification	There is nothing to accept or reject against, and no basis for a claim
11	Quantity of units failing acceptance you will tolerate	Yield expectations must be priced. A supplier quoting 20 delivered units that pass is quoting a different job from one quoting 20 attempts	Disputes at delivery
12	Media, supplements and coating: in or out	Frequently required to achieve the datasheet performance, and frequently priced separately. One catalogue lists “cells only” and “kit” as a $100 difference on a $616 item	Scope creep after the purchase order, or an unfair comparison
13	QC deliverables required with the shipment	Certificate of analysis, STR, mycoplasma, sterility, karyotype, marker data, raw traces. Each has a cost and some are not standard	You receive whatever is standard, which varies by supplier
14	Grade: RUO or GMP, and if GMP, which phase	Changes the price basis entirely and moves lead time from weeks to months. See RUO vs GMP	The supplier assumes RUO, correctly in most cases
15	Licensing and intended use	Research, fee-for-service, or commercial derivative. The right to sell a derivative is usually not included and is the real gate. See cell line licensing	You buy material you are not permitted to build a product on
16	Sequencing intent	Some donor lineages carry consent-based sequencing restrictions that propagate silently to derived products	You discover the restriction at publication
17	Shipping mode, destination and incoterms	Dry ice, dry shipper, or ambient live each carry different cost, risk and paperwork. International adds permits	Shipping appears as a surprise line item, or the material arrives dead
18	Required delivery date and acceptable window	Living material on a fixed production cadence cannot be accelerated. Some suppliers ship one day a week	You get the supplier’s next slot, whenever that is
19	Data and IP ownership (service work only)	Who owns the process developed, the data generated, and any improvement	Ambiguity that surfaces at exactly the wrong moment
20	Acceptance testing on arrival, and who pays for a failed lot	Names the remedy: replacement, credit, or nothing	You have a specification with no consequence attached
21	Contact, purchase order route and institutional requirements	Import permits, biosafety approvals, and institutional MTAs take real time	The quote is fine and the paperwork adds six weeks

Which fields matter for which purchase

Not every RFQ needs all twenty-one. A rough guide:

Catalogue cells: fields 1–8, 12–18, 21. Geometry and acceptance testing are usually handled by the datasheet.
Custom differentiation service: all of the above plus 10, 11, 19, 20.
Engineered tissue built to spec: all twenty-one, with 9, 10 and 11 carrying most of the weight and most of the cost.
Custom device fabrication: 1, 2, 9, 17, 18, 19, 21, plus material, feature size and tolerance fields specific to fabrication.

Worked example

The following is a complete RFQ for a custom contractile tissue build. It is illustrative — no supplier has quoted against it — but it is written the way one should be written, and it demonstrates every field that matters.

RFQ: engineered skeletal muscle strips, 20 units

1. Deliverable. Twenty physically delivered engineered skeletal muscle tissue strips, matured and electrically stimulable, each meeting the acceptance criteria in section 10. We are purchasing the physical parts, not a study or a report. If you are unable to sell the physical tissue as the deliverable, please say so in your response rather than quoting an alternative scope.

2. Quantity and counting convention. Twenty units delivered and passing acceptance. Please quote separately for a first article of two units. State how many units you expect to cast in order to deliver twenty passing units, and whether the failed units are at your cost or ours.

3. Species and source. Human. We will consider primary human myoblasts or iPSC-derived myogenic progenitors. Please quote both routes if you offer both.

4. Cell type. Myogenic progenitors capable of fusion to multinucleated myotubes.

5. Genotype. Unaffected donor. No disease background required. Isogenic control not required.

6. Purity. State myogenic content as desmin-positive percentage at the point of seeding, with method.

7. Viability. Not applicable to the delivered tissue; state the post-thaw viability specification and method for the cell input if cells are purchased rather than expanded in-house.

8. Delivery format. Living tissue, anchored in its culture device, shipped at controlled temperature for immediate use on receipt. State your shelf life on arrival, and whether that shelf life includes transit.

9. Geometry and mechanical interface. Approximately 10 mm free span between anchors, approximately 1 mm cross-section, aligned along the long axis, with loop or post terminations at both ends suitable for mounting in a force transducer. If your existing device geometry is close but not identical, quote that as an alternative — we would rather adapt our fixture than pay for tooling if the difference is immaterial.

10. Functional acceptance criteria. Each delivered unit to produce a twitch force of at least 500 µN under single-pulse field stimulation, measured at the point of release, with the measurement method, electrode configuration, stimulation parameters, bath temperature and medium stated. Supply the raw force trace per unit, not a summary statistic.

11. Yield tolerance. We will accept delivery of eighteen or more passing units against an order of twenty, with a pro-rata credit below that. State whether you will contract to this.

12. Media, supplements and coating. In scope. Include everything required to keep the tissue viable from receipt through 72 hours, and list it as a separate line item so we can see it.

13. QC deliverables. Per-unit force trace. Certificate of analysis for the cell input including identity, sterility and mycoplasma status. Representative histology or immunofluorescence for alignment and fusion on at least two units. State which of these are standard and which are chargeable extras.

14. Grade. Research use only. No GMP requirement.

15. Licensing and intended use. Internal research and engineering development. We do not currently intend to resell the delivered units or any derivative. Please state any use restrictions attaching to the cell source you propose, and separately state whether a commercial derivative licence is available and from whom, so we can assess it now rather than later.

16. Sequencing intent. We may sequence the cell input. Please confirm the donor consent permits it, or propose a lineage that does.

17. Shipping. Destination [city, country]. Please state shipping mode, packaging, temperature control, expected transit time, whether the shipment is a regulated dangerous good under IATA in the mode you propose, and what import documentation we must provide. Quote shipping separately.

18. Timing. Required delivery within sixteen weeks of purchase order. State your lead time broken down by phase — tooling, cell expansion, casting, maturation, QC, shipping — so we can see where the schedule risk is. If you produce on a fixed weekly cadence, state the day.

19. Data and IP. Any tooling designed for this order: state whether we own it, whether it is exclusive to us, and what a repeat order costs with the tooling already existing. Force data generated in acceptance testing is ours.

20. Acceptance and remedy. We will re-test a sample of delivered units on arrival against section 10. State your remedy for units failing acceptance: replacement, credit, or none, and the window in which we must raise a claim.

21. Contacts and paperwork. [Buyer name, institution, purchase order route.] We will require an institutional MTA review; please send your standard terms with the quote rather than after it.

Response format requested. Please return: a line-item price breakdown separating non-recurring tooling from per-unit cost; a repeat-order per-unit price with tooling already amortised; a lead time by phase; an explicit yes or no on section 10 and section 11; and any scope you are declining to quote.

The line that does the most work

Section 20, and the request for a line-item breakdown separating non-recurring tooling from per-unit cost.

Without that separation, a first-article quote and a production quote are indistinguishable, and you cannot tell whether a high number is expensive tooling amortised into a small run or an expensive part. With it, you can compare a supplier with existing tooling against one who must build it, which is frequently the largest single difference between two quotes for the same physical object.

Relation to the .wwd standard

Fields 9 and 10 — geometry and functional acceptance criteria — are exactly what the .wwd format exists to carry in machine-readable form. A .wwd package expresses a component as geometry plus spatially varying property fields, tags each property with whether it is designed, measured, simulated or inferred, and carries acceptance criteria in the design document alongside the results once the part is built.

For a prose RFQ this is optional. For a repeat order, a multi-supplier comparison, or any situation where the same specification is quoted more than once, attaching a .wwd package removes the interpretation step: the supplier is quoting against a structured document rather than a paragraph, and the acceptance criteria are stated in the same units in both directions.

If you would rather not write it

We run this process as a service. Send the specification in whatever state it is in — a paragraph is fine — and we will turn it into a comparable RFQ, put it to named suppliers, normalise the responses onto one counting convention, and tell you where the quotes actually differ. The spread between three quotes for the same written specification is market data that does not otherwise exist in this industry.

What belongs in a wetware RFQ