Fighting Infection Cancer Vaccines Friendly Bacteria Cellular and Regenerative Medicine Conclusion The Clinical Applications of Syntheticology – Toby Murcott Introduction. One way to look at medicine is that it attempts to repair malfunctions of the human body, be they internal errors such as genetic diseases or invasions of parasites and pathogens. Synthetic biology aims to [...]

SYBHEL website report on the first round of workshops. Written by Anna Deplazes-Zemp, Conor Douglas and Inigo de Miguel. The first round of workshops have now been completed by the SYBHEL project. These workshops were held across Europe, in Zurich, Bilbao and Brussels. The participants invited to these workshops also came from a range of [...]

INTRODUCTION The title of the SYBHEL Work Package 2 for which the SYBHEL-participants from the IBME (Institute of Biomedical Ethics) at the University of Zurich are responsible is: “Synthetic Biology and the Definition and Creation of life”. We enquire the impact of different definitions and conceptions of life for the assessment and understanding of synthetic [...]

In their monthly column, Carlos María Romeo Casabona and Iñigo de Miguel Beriain, take a look at the legal issues in synthetic biology.   New opinion on IP! The Opinion of the General Advocate of the European Court of Justice, in relation with the case  delivered on 10 March 2011, has been published. Its final [...]

SynBio has several definitions, tools and approaches. A NEST high-level expert group has defined SynBio as: “[T]he engineering of biology: the synthesis of complex, biologically based (or inspired) systems which display functions that do not exist in nature. This engineering perspective may be applied at all levels of the hierarchy of biological structures…. In essence, [...]

Throughout the recent history of scientific research and biomedicine, there has been criticism that ethical analyses have lagged behind the pace of research. The opportunity to address a new technology like SynBio from an ethical perspective early in its development is transient and should not be missed. Indeed, the European Commission has recognised that: “It [...]

With a technology as recent as SynBio, it is not surprising that ethical deliberation of implications is still emerging. However literature on SynBioEthics is constantly increasing. These publications are supplemented by SynBio researchers’ awareness of ethical issues, with ethics sessions at all annual Synthetic Biology conferences to date. In 2006, attendees at this conference considered [...]