“Risk Management Can Actually Be Fun” - Using the Serious Cards for Biosafety Game to Stimulate Proper Discussions About Biosafety

Memories of Biosafety in Brazil: Lessons to be Learned

Biosafety considerations for autopsy.

An autopsy may subject prosectors and others to a wide variety of infectious agents, including bloodborne and aerosolized pathogens such as human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis B and C viruses, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Other hazards include toxic chemicals (e.g., formalin, cyanide, and organophosphates) and radiation from radionuclides used for patient therapy and diagnosis. These ris...

Regulatory and Biosafety Challenges for Vaccines

The global regulatory plan for vaccines provides a unique opportunity to develop safe and effective ones with assured quality. Methods used by regulators address challenges of new products and technologies and also increase understanding of benefits and risks of existing products. First, the laboratory-based regulatory sciences evolve correlates of immunity and safety; or improve the product ch...

Avian influenza surveillance: on the usability of FTA cards to solve biosafety and transport issues

Many zoonotic diseases have birds as their natural hosts. Waterfowl are the natural hosts of avian influenza viruses (AIVs) and most avian influenza infections of wild birds appear mild, with infected inviduals displaying no or few symptoms. It is clear that the epidemiology of avian influenza cannot be fully understood without taking the ecology of its hosts into account. However, large scale ...

Biosafety of lentiviral vectors.

The characteristics of lentiviral vectors (stable integration in non-dividing and dividing cells, long-term expression of the transgene, absence of immune response) make them ideal gene transfer vehicula for future gene therapy. However, the most potent lentiviral vectors are derived from highly pathogenic human viruses, such as HIV. We describe how the field has engineered lentivectors with in...