Safety

PROJECT AIMS OF LABORATORY SAFETY

Project Design

Us at HKSSC cares about safety of our fellow iGEM teams. In the following page, we will address concerns about project design, laboratory, environment, and project risks.

  • Our project does not use organisms from biosafety level 3 and 4.
  • All of our conducts follow iGEM and local government’s instruction (cite HK gov lab rules doc).
  • Our work is permitted in the white list.
  • We do not require any permission from iGEM.
  • Professionals have given us formal approval on our address on project safety.

Laboratory

The laboratories are well equipped to ensure the safety, when conducting experiments, of students, teachers, research assistants and laboratory technicians. Attached are some pictures that can give some idea of lab set up.

Safety Route Evacuation Plan

Locked chemical cupboard

Fume hood

Flammable Liquird storage cabinet

First Aid Kit

Bin for broken glass

Laminar flow hood

Separate room for handling mammal cell culture

Laminar Flow Hood, biosafety level 2

Lab Coat

  • All members who are conducting experiments have received training with basic experimental procedures here.
  • Lab coats are used and washed once per week
  • Rubber and nitrile gloves are provided at different sizes to ensure a proper fit for every team member.
  • Lab spaces are of biosafety level 1 and 3.
  • Responsible individuals (lab technicians and biology teachers) are always present
  • Disinfection and sterilisation processes are always …
  • Rules for transporting samples between labs or shipping between institutions
  • Physical biosecurity (e.g. tracking materials, access controls)
  • Personnel biosecurity (e.g. watching for unusual behaviour)
  • Data biosecurity / cyberbiosecurity (e.g. managing database access)
  • Dual-use research and/or experiments of concern
  • Chemical, fire and electrical safety

Environment

PROJECT RISKS

Our team has had conversations within and outside of our team to evaluate possible bad outcomes of our project, this includes:

  • Harm to human health
  • Harm to environment

We have been discussing with stakeholders from different universities, such as CUHK and HKU, on the possible safety issues of the project.

We have made changes: choosing non-pathogenic strains; and shifting our project from using bacterial genes to using our own immune system-based approach. More information on these conversations, besides safety, can be found in our human practices page.

Our engineered product is highly unlikely to spread to other organisms than our target as our drug design, 3'UTR of specific mRNA in its translation system, is a cell free system.

BIOSECURITY MEASURES
  • Accident reporting (system to record any lab accidents)
  • Personal Protective Equipment / PPE (wearing lab coats, gloves, eye protection, etc.)
  • Inventory controls (tracking who has what physical materials and where the materials are)
  • Physical access controls (controlling who can access your lab or storage spaces)
  • Data access controls (controlling who can access computers or databases)
  • Lone Worker or Out of Hours policy (procedures for working alone or at times when normal support is unavailable)
  • Medical surveillance (finding out if you get sick because of an organism or chemical you used)
  • Waste management system (such as decontaminating waste before it leaves your institution)
  • Additional containment (such as working at a higher biosafety level)

Experimental Procedures