High Stakes and High Containment: Where Are Biosafety Labs Headed?

This project was a runner-up for the  "Novel research (qualitative)" prize on our Pandemics (Sept 2024) course. The text below is an excerpt from the final project.

Abstract

Since the last pandemic the threats associated with dangerous pathogens came in the spotlight of the media and the wider public. Established principles of Biosafety assigned levels from 1 (least dangerous) to 4 (most dangerous) for containment facilities which work with such pathogens. The BlueDot Biosecurity/Pandemics project paper of (Smith, 2024) is the starting point as it proposes biosafety level 5 as the new top level for high containment laboratories. It is rationalized primarily based on new risks emerging form gain-of-function experiments resulting in pathogens of enhanced pandemic potential. This paper here recaps the new proposal and provides a comprehensive review of the main biosafety levels as described in the WHO and CDC guidelines for containment facilities. Following a brief reconciliation of those, additional drivers in the field of biosafety as well as for new technologies are identified and discussed aiming to improve biosafety aspects in high containment facilities primarily from an engineering point of view. Based on some criteria of the initial paper and applied drivers from the previous chapters, ideas are developed and evaluated that could take containment facilities to the next level.

Full project

You can view the full project here.