martes, 21 de junio de 2016

CBER Laboratories in the Life Sciences-Biodefense Complex | FDA Voice

CBER Laboratories in the Life Sciences-Biodefense Complex | FDA Voice

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CBER Laboratories in the Life Sciences-Biodefense Complex

By: Carolyn A. Wilson, Ph.D.
Wise management of research programs means more than selecting projects that will yield the most scientific information but also making sure that we are making wise use of the dollars we allot for research.
Carolyn A. WilsonThat’s why FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) thinks strategically when it plans research programs by the more than 70 principal investigators who work in our two-year-old laboratories in the Life Sciences-Biodefense Complex at FDA’s White Oak campus.
We ask ourselves how we can most efficiently – and cost-effectively – obtain the answers to our scientific questions that our regulators will need to achieve their mission of ensuring the safety, purity, and potency of biological products.  Products regulated by CBER include vaccines, allergenics (allergy diagnostics and treatments), cellular, tissue, and gene therapy products, and blood and blood products.
To sharpen our research planning we recently undertook a major evaluation of our center’s scientific and administrative strategies and programs with the assistance of an outside consulting firm.
The findings have enabled us to refine  our strategies for wringing the most new knowledge from every dollar we spend on regulatory science – the science of developing new tools, standards and approaches to assess the safety, efficacy, quality and performance of FDA-regulated products. These refinements to CBER’s research strategy include:
  • A Resource Committee that manages CBER’s annual budget, as well as a Regulatory Science Council that develops center-wide goals, guides office-level objectives, and oversees all research activities. These two councils will increase overall transparency of decision-making, make sure that research is prioritized, and aim to make budget planning more timely and responsive to our mission.
  • More direct control of funds by individual CBER offices and earlier allocation of that funding, and annual peer review of 25 percent of existing and new projects to ensure accountability for how they are run.
  • Systems to increase the transparency of CBER research and research funding, enhance management decisions, and facilitate tracking of funding allocated to activities and projects.
  • Elevating the culture of science through monthly presentations highlighting the public health impact and mission relevance of CBER research; biannual CBER-wide Science Symposium, providing opportunities for communication and potentially improved collaboration across all CBER research projects; and, enhanced prominence of CBER research fellows in the research enterprise.
jars of vegetables
Faulty home food preservation is one potential source of botulism. FDA scientists are developing methods that will help manufacturers to make a vaccine that will prevent this bacterial illness.
These research and administration refinements are helping us better identify and prepare for tomorrow’s needs.  And when you consider the approximately 70-80 research programs we have underway, we’re doing a lot. A few examples include:
  • Studying botulism toxoids(inactivated illness-causing chemicals released by bacteria) to support development of the first vaccine to prevent this potentially fatal infection. CBER scientists are designing new tests to predict what vaccine approaches may be protective. These tests may also help screen vaccines that protect against other toxins such as those from anthrax, as well as the plant-derived toxin ricin.
  • Determining the critical immune events that provide protective immunity to intracellular microbes (bacteria and parasites that live inside human cells). Based on this, FDA scientists will develop new measurements to predict protection that may help evaluate new vaccines for these microbes.
    Girl sneezing in a field of flowers.
    Allergies can turn nature walks into annoying sneezing fits. FDA scientists are developing new tools to help manufacturers produce more potent allergy shots and enhance their safety.
  • Developing new tools and data to help manufacturers produce more potent allergy shots and enhance their safety.
  • Helping to develop a test for cow intestine to ensure heparin harvested from this tissue is not contaminatedwith the agent causing the bovine transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE, also known as “mad cow disease”), a known risk to humans. This would help to ensure a safe, reliable, domestic source of heparin, which is now obtained mostly from China.
  • Developing new methods and technologies for rapid-testing detection and characterization of emerging infectious pathogens that threaten the safety of tissue and tissue-based products. In the course of developing these technologies, the lab has found previously unidentified microbial contaminants in archived tissues used for these studies. These findings provide preliminary evidence to support the potential for application of rapid test technologies in evaluation of emerging infectious disease transmission risks associated with the implantation, transplantation, infusion, or transfer of human tissue.
As CBER continues to advance regulatory science in its Life Sciences-BioDefense Complex, our projects will adapt to new challenges that the science of biologics will inevitably pose to FDA. And CBER will address those challenges, keeping in mind both the public health and our fiduciary responsibility to make every research dollar count.
Carolyn A. Wilson, Ph.D., is Associate Director for Research at FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research

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