The International Experts Group of Biosafety and Biosecurity Regulators

The International Experts Group of Biosafety and Biosecurity Regulators (the Group) was created in 2007, by the Public Health Agency of Canada (the Agency), as a forum for sharing knowledge and experience about human and zoonotic animal pathogen biosafety and biosecurity oversight issues. The Group is made up of biosafety and/or biosecurity regulatory authorities from 11 member countries that have strong biosafety and biosecurity regulatory oversight systems in place. The International Experts Group of Biosafety and Biosecurity Regulators Secretariat (the Secretariat) was established in 2016 to carry out the Group’s projects that contribute to the continued development and strengthening of global biosafety and biosecurity regulatory oversight. Since 2022, the Group has been engaging with regional organizations, in particular the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to identify areas for cooperation in the development or improvement of national and regional biosafety and biosecurity regulatory frameworks.

Expertise and reference tools

The Group’s app is the flagship reference tool developed by the Secretariat. Launched in 2020, the app provides 11 detailed examples of the national oversight systems of the Group’s member countries. It includes a Compendium of International Biosafety and Biosecurity Oversight Systems for Human and Animal Pathogens and Toxins, as well as a module on the Review of Oversight of Dual-Use in Life Sciences in the Group’s member countries. The app is available in English and French.

• Check out the app on Google Play or the App Store .
• For more information, visit the Group’s website .

Last year, the Secretariat, with financial support from Global Affairs Canada, Weapons Threat Reduction Program, continued its work to develop reference tools and to establish and bolster its capacity-building and expertise program as a benchmark within regional biosafety and biosecurity organizations.

In September 2023, the Group released the Model of Standardized Regulatory Practices for Biosafety and Biosecurity Incidents on the Agency’s training portal. The model describes the integral components of an incident reporting system and is based on the analysis of the collective incident reporting systems belonging to the regulatory authorities of the Group’s member countries. This model was developed by the Group as a capacity-building tool for the international community to improve incident reporting systems and their standardization globally.

The Secretariat is updating its technical expertise program for this year. The aim is to increase its global reach and have the flexibility to meet the needs of nations or regional organizations to improve or implement regulatory oversight frameworks. The New Capacity-building Technical Expertise Exchange Program takes advantage of the 19 topics of expertise within the Group’s member countries. In collaboration with regional organizations, it aims at developing a cooperation plan that can range from regional-focused capacity-building webinars to national-focused tailored technical expertise exchange.

In March 2024, the Group organized 2 capacity-building webinars, with members of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention as primary recipients. The first session was focused on dual-use oversight and included presentations from The Agency’s Centre for Biosecurity on Plans for Administrative Oversight and from the Netherland’s National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. For the second session, representatives from Switzerland’s Enforcement for Chemicals and Biosafety and from the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presented on their frameworks for Laboratory Inspections and Inventory Management, respectively.

Handouts for all presentations are available on the International Experts Group of Biosafety and Biosecurity Regulators website in the following languages:

• English
• French
• Arabic
• Spanish
• Portuguese

More sessions are planned for the fall. Stay tuned.