Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices

Describe a biological engineering application or tool you want to develop and why.

Virus Hunting

The usage of virus hunting to discover viruses in animal populations that might become a pandemic and exploit it as a gene therapy tool. first of all the viruses are isolated from hosts of interest, then sequencing their genome, then characterize the virus. Following steps will be:

1. Developing arrays for the virus detection providing a faster and cheaper way.
2. Exploiting the virus replication machinery to deliver compounds / biopharmaceuticals to humans or animals.

Disocvering potential pandemic pathogens early will prevent its outbreak and prepare us well.

Describe one or more governance policy goals related to ensuring this application contributes to an ethical future & prevents harm.

• Biosafety and biosecurity aims to prevent loss, theft and misuse of highconsequence material. This can be done by providing and implementing risk control measures that address the risks associated with conducting high-consequence research and working with high-consequence material, including other biosecurity-relevant material.

• The intrinsic risks of working with biological agents are not only of a biosafety nature, such as exposure or unintentional release, but also of biosecurity, which includes the theft, misuse, or intended release of biological material.

Describe at least three different potential governance actions by considering the purpose, design, assumptions, and risks of failures & “success”

1. Development of a board to organize and authorize the suitable scientist for conducting virus hunting

• Purpose: The aim is to allow only trained professionals to conduct such procedures
• Design: Every country will have a trusted board that will allow and oversee the virus hunting procedures and these boards will be under the supervision of a central board that will get periodic reports
• Assumptions: Incorrect selection of personnel might lead to inproper viral isolation and process organization leading to its outbreak
• Risks of Failures & Success: This action might fall if not properly implemented

2. Development of an agreed upon method of biological materials disposal

• Purpose: The aim is to control and oversee disposal methods to prevent any outbreaks
• Design: Professionals will be further trained
• Assumptions: Ignoring the right protocol for disposal may lead to an outbreak
• Risks of Failures & Success: not providing the right training and control

3. Providing enough funds to conduct the required procedures in the countries of interest

• Purpose: this action aim to fund labs at developing countries of interest
• Design: The organization will provide the fund and supervise its implementation to buy the right equipment and tools
• Assumption: Corruption or not providing the fund will hinder the virus hunting procedures in that country
• Risk of Failures & Success: Not providing enough funds will stop the required procedures

Score each of your governance actions against your rubric of policy goals.

Based on scores, describe which governance option or combination of options, you would prioritize, and why.

Based on the scores:

• I would prioritize the formation of the board because it is the base upon which every other step will follow.
• I would prioritize as well providing enough funds especially for developing countries in which many have the knowledgeable scientists but not enouhg funds for buying the necessary equipment.

References

Hunting for the next pandemic virus (no date) ASM.org. Available at: https://asm.org/magazine/2022/fall/hunting-for-the-next-pandemic-virus

Vaidyanathan, G. (2011) ‘Virus hunters: Catching bugs in the field’, Cell, 147(6), pp. 1209–1211. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2011.11.037.

World Health Organization. Available at: https://iris.who.int/