NEWS OF TH E WEEK
PROMOTING LAB SAFETY ACADEMIA: Studies suggest ways to
support safe research practices
T
WO NEW REPORTS FROM the National Re-
search Council (NRC) and Stanford University offer guidance to the chemistry community for how to improve the safety culture in academic laboratories. The NRC project looked at current safety practices and attitudes in academic chemistry labs; behavioral science; and safety experience in aviation, health care, industrial research facilities, and the nuclear industry. The resulting report has recommendations for how institutions can better integrate safety into research practices. “I think that all of us who study a discipline for our whole lives tend to think that our discipline is unique in so many different respects,” says H. Holden Thorp, the NRC committee chair and provost at Washington University in St. Louis. Nevertheless, experience in other fields can help chemists address potential hazards in research labs, says Thorp, who is also a chemistry professor. The American Chemical Society, which publishes C&EN, helped sponsor the NRC study. The report is available at bit.ly/NASreport. The Stanford report—an internal study intended to assess the institution’s current safety culture—provides recommendations for how to improve that culture. The Stanford project included open meetings with stakeholders, comments submitted online, a survey,
and detailed interviews with NRC RECOMMENDATIONS researchers. The lab research 1. Institution leaders must actively community tends to be very demonstrate that safety is a core value. data-driven, so it was important 2. Leaders should include fostering a to have a robust assessment, positive safety culture in criteria for faculty says Robert M. Waymouth, one promotion, tenure, and salary decisions. of three cochairs of the project and a professor of chemistry. 3. Leaders should consider what research The Stanford report, reviewed can be done safely, given resources by C&EN, will be available at available. ehs.stanford.edu. 4. Institutions should have comprehensive Both studies outline the imrisk-management plans for lab safety. portance of different roles and leadership in various groups: 5. Department chairs and principal administrators, principal invesinvestigators (PIs) should use engagement tigators, bench researchers, and strategies and institutional support to safety professionals. Defining promote a strong safety culture. safety roles will help institu6. Department chairs should promote tions stress the importance of robust safety collaborations among PIs, accountability across the board, researchers, and safety professionals. says Mary Beth C. Koza, direc7. ACS and other organizations should tor of the environment, health, establish and maintain an incident and and safety department at the near-miss reporting system. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 8. Researchers should incorporate hazard The reports “do a great job analysis into lab notebooks and research of condensing the current situprocesses. ation and describing where we 9. Department chairs and PIs should want to go,” says John B. Asbury, develop lab-centric activities to a chemistry professor at Penncomplement other safety training. sylvania State University who has been leading an effort to improve safety in his department. “The path to get there is less clear. We really need to have a discussion of best practices that people have found for getting there.”— JYLLIAN KEMSLEY
RESEARCH New firm to sell a polymer chip that emulates human physiology
EMU LATE
Scientists at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have secured $12 million in venture capital for the launch of Emulate, a company seeking to commercialize a polymer chip with automated instrumentation and software that predicts human responses to medicines, chemicals, and toxins.
Emulate’s lungon-a-chip.
Emulate is betting that its Organs-onChips platform will expedite laboratory testing of drugs, reduce the need for animal testing, and advance personalized medicine research. The size of a computer memory stick, the chip device contains hollow channels lined with living cells and tissues that mimic organ-level physiology. Wyss earlier received funding to develop Organs-on-Chips from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Food & Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. Wyss scientists, led by founding director Donald E. Ingber, and industry partners, including Sony and AstraZeneca, have worked since 2010 to develop
CEN.ACS.ORG
7
AUGUST 4, 2014
chips and instrumentation that mimic at least 10 different organs, including the liver, gut, kidney, and bone marrow. According to Ingber, the federal government is interested in the technology as a means of speeding the development of drugs that address medical emergencies such as H1N1 and SARS. Bernard H. Munos, founder of the InnoThink Center for Research in Biomedical Innovation and a former R&D strategist at Eli Lilly & Co., calls the chip a good idea whose time has come. “The technology is ready,” he says. “It could potentially be a big market. If it can eliminate the need for animals, you’re talking about a major impact on the economics of research.”—RICK MULLIN
