By Alessandra Suuberg, Decency LLC
Just short of the mid-way mark, September has already been a busy month for biotechnology and biosecurity.
Here are some of the headlines:
Boston Biologist, Former DARPA Scientist to Head New ARPA-H
U.S. President Joe Biden has selected Renee Wegrzyn to return from her private-sector role at Boston’s Gingko Bioworks and head the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) (Nature, September 12).
In 2020, Wegrzyn left a role with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an advanced technology branch of the Department of Defense.
According to coverage this week in Nature, “[M]any foundational details about the agency [ARPA-H] are yet to be finalized.” Its purpose is “to shake up the conventional model of funding biomedical research” and fund “high-risk, high-reward research in the life sciences.”
The Spiez CONVERGENCE Meets in Switzerland
The Spiez conference on advances in biology and chemistry met this week in Switzerland with “66 participants from 12 countries and 3 organisations,” according to an announcement on Twitter.
The Spiez Lab is a division of the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection.
According to Reuters (January 2022), the Spiez lab has researched “chemical, biological and nuclear threats since World War Two,” and the World Health Organization has tasked it with being “the first in a global network of high-security laboratories that will grow, store and share newly discovered microbes that could unleash the next pandemic.”
The goal of the CONVERGENCE is to consider how developments in biology and chemistry “may affect production technologies for toxic chemicals, toxins and microorganisms” and to “assess potential implications for chemical and biological arms control.”
Biological Weapons Convention Meeting Concludes in Geneva
September 9 marked the conclusion of a Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Article V Formal Consultative Meeting called by Russia.
Pursuant to Article V, “States Parties” can “undertake to consult one another and cooperate in solving any problems which may arise in relation to the objective or application of the” BWC.
The United Nations has published documents relating to this month’s meeting on the UNODA (United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs) Meetings Place website.
The New WHO Framework for Mitigating Bio-Risks
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released guidance on “responsible use of life sciences” (United News of Bangladesh, September 13).
In releasing its Global guidance framework for the responsible use of the life sciences: mitigating biorisks and governing dual-use research, the WHO emphasized the role of responsible research in preventing and mitigating risks posed by “accidents, inadvertent or deliberate misuse with the intention to cause harm to humans, nonhuman animals, plants and agriculture, and the environment.”
The WHO guidance has been described in the media as “the first global, technical and normative framework for mitigating bio-risks and governing dual-use research.”
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