UMHS professor joins biosecurity advisory board

Michael J. Imperiale, professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical School and chair of the University's Institutional Biosafety Committee, has been appointed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).

Imperiale, along with 23 other voting-member scientists and individuals involved in biosecurity, began his four-year term of service on the board June 14. Members of the NSABB will meet quarterly to provide advice and recommend strategies on the oversight of federally approved biologic research, called dual-use research, in an effort to assure that it will not be misused to threaten public health or national security.

The NSABB will discuss five issues related to biosecurity:

• Define dual-use criteria;

• Determine how best to communicate results of studies with a potential dual-use, including whether or how certain results, which might be used to cause a threat, should be communicated. This issue raises questions of academic freedom;

• Develop a code of conduct for researchers in the bio-sciences that can be taught in medical and graduate schools and as part of research education curricula;

• Address international cooperation issues;

• Address regulatory issues related to synthetic genome research. The ability for scientists to synthetically create viruses already exists, Imperiale says, so creating bacterial genomes may not be too far in the future and must be addressed.

Formation of the NSABB is the direct result of a National Academy of Sciences attempt two years ago to address biotechnology research in the age of terrorism.

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