GCBR Organization Updates - August 2023

Updates from 1Day Sooner, CLTR, Convergent Research, CSR, Effective Giving, Gryphon Scientific, IFP, CHS, NTI | bio, Open Philanthropy, SecureBio

Welcome! This newsletter aims to provide quarterly updates from organizations working to reduce global catastrophic biological risks (GCBRs). 

We hope to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community. For this first edition, we’ve included 11 organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs, but this is by no means an exhaustive list, and we hope to broaden our scope in the future.

We’d be grateful for any feedback on the newsletter! You can give us input via this brief form (2 minutes) or by sending an email to Tessa at hello@tessa.fyi. 

Thank you for your interest and support,
Tessa Alexanian, Chris Bakerlee, and Anemone Franz

1DaySooner

1Day Sooner is a nonprofit organization that advocates for high-impact medical studies and the efficient development of life-saving medical research. 

• We're focusing on several major areas, including:

  • Pandemic preparedness through regulatory reform in the US and UK (e.g., the US FDA Emerging Pathogens Preparedness Program)

  • Anticipated approval of the first-ever human challenge trials for hepatitis C; trials are likely to begin in Canada in 2024

  • Continued research into indoor air quality interventions, especially germicidal UV light

• We released our Air Safety to Combat Global Catastrophic Biorisk report in the last quarter.

• We're hiring! We're looking for people to take up our hepatitis C challenge efforts, as well as people interested in either full-time advocacy or contracted scientific/technical advisory roles for our U.S. regulatory efforts.

You can sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of our homepage.

Center for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at CLTR works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• Our team has been focused on the UK Government’s release of the 2023 Biological Security Strategy.

  • We provided comments on the Strategy in the official press release and a joint statement published on our website. The Strategy’s commitments include advice we have given on novel pathogen surveillance and metagenomics, genetic engineering detection and attribution, and proposed governance structures. We are now focused on assisting with the implementation of the Strategy’s commitments, including:

    • The National Biosurveillance Network setup for novel pathogen detection 

    • Gene Synthesis Screening technical guidelines

    • Formation of the UK’s Biosecurity Leadership Council

• We hosted and ran a day-long Biosecurity Workshop in collaboration with SecureBio, which was well attended by a range of UK and non-UK biosecurity experts from government, academia and industry.

• AI and Biotechnology

  • We published an article in the Financial Times detailing some of the emerging risks at the intersection of AI and Biotechnology which require urgent action.

We are engaged in an AI-Biosecurity workstream with rapid developments in the coming months due to events in the UK. If you are interested in engaging on this topic or any of the above topics, please contact Dr. Cassidy Nelson, Head of Biosecurity Policy at CLTR (cassidy@longtermresilience.org).

Convergent Research

Convergent Research launches Focused Research Organizations (FROs) to tackle large-scale, tightly coordinated, non-profit projects. Their biosecurity team is investigating FROs to reduce risks from pandemics.

• We launched a roadmap towards ubiquitous metagenomic sequencing that asks how metagenomic sequencing could become as widely available as diagnostic PCR machines are today, with funding from Open Philanthropy.

• In June, we hosted a Solid-State Far-UVC Emitter Workshop that brought together two dozen academic and industry experts to gather input on the possible approaches for solid-state Far-UVC and develop operationalized target metrics for emitter device performance. The team is now working on a whitepaper to capture the discussion and currently believes that an FRO with a focus on safety and efficacy testing holds the most promise.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century.

• As part of our efforts to increase awareness of the importance of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act Reauthorization, CSR hosted two roundtable discussions featuring perspectives from previous ASPR leaders and the role of the White House.

• To increase awareness and transparency of the biodefense efforts by the United States, our team has been building a new tool for analyzing biodefense spending across the U.S. Federal Budget, set to launch on the CSR website later this summer.

• Tracking the status of our organization's recommendations on biodefense throughout our history, the first installment of our Scorecard Series will be published in the coming weeks.

• Targeting an early September release, CSR is finalizing a new report on the intersection of ecological and biological security in zoonotic spillover prevention.

To keep up to date with announcements and postings, follow our accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter!

Effective Giving Biosecurity team 

Effective Giving is a nonprofit organization that helps major donors find the most promising solutions to the world's most pressing problems. Over the past few years, their Biosecurity team has focused on researching areas to prioritize within biosecurity, refining the investigation and evaluation of grants, and working closely with grantees.

Grantmaking

• Since 2021, we’ve recommended grants totaling approximately €26M to support work across a wide range of areas within biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.

• We have primarily recommended grants to well-established organizations (as opposed to, e.g., scholarships to individuals). A few examples of our past grantees include: 

  • Gryphon Scientific 

  • International Biosecurity & Biosafety Initiative for Science 

  • Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security 

• We are especially interested in identifying more excellent grant opportunities to investigate further, including (but definitely not limited to):

  • life sciences research oversight

  • gene synthesis security

  • biological weapons governance

  • pandemic preparedness policy 

Supporting GCBR mitigation efforts in Asia

• We’ve spent much of the past year investigating grants to support the establishment of a new research center on health security based in Southeast Asia. This project is still in an early stage, but we hope to be able to share more sometime next year. 

Effective Giving does not maintain a social media presence, but our biosecurity program officer Joshua Monrad spoke (in a personal capacity) on the Hear This Idea podcast in October 2022.

Gryphon Scientific

Gryphon Scientific is a consulting practice that uses rigorous scientific analyses to address problems of global health and security. 

Focus areas and projects

• Towards a Theory of Pandemic Proof PPE looking at everything from PPE design (e.g., full-body designs that allow female-bodied workers to use the bathroom without fully doffing) to requirements for protection, to supply chain.

• Creating a global research agenda to fill critical data gaps in biosafety instead of relying on analogies from aviation and nuclear power for risk assessments. Please share your ideas on biosafety data gaps or innovative practices to reduce risks!

  • We are recruiting participants (especially from the Global South) for workshops related to the agenda; email Ryan Ritterson at rritterson@gryphonscientific.com for more information.

  • For life scientists or engineers interested in biosafety research, we can provide concepts for experiments and help kickstart your research. For more information, email Rocco Casagrande at rocco@gryphonscientific.com.

• Dual-use risk assessments for AI systems in collaboration with both AI companies and government players.

• A pilot of a Benefit Assessment Framework to Support Decisions on Human Pathogen Research to address the relative lack of tools for assessing a research proposal’s benefits to public health in addition to its biosafety/security risks and scientific merit. Reach out to Dan Greene at dgreene@gryphonscientific.com if you’d like a copy of the draft whitepaper.

• Preparing a report estimating the amount of pathogen research conducted in the private sector in the USA to assist in prioritizing policy interventions.

Recent Publications

• Empirical Biosafety: Rate of Splashes When Opening Microfuge Tubes with Various Methods, Applied Biosafety, June 2023

• Policy Advocacy: a New York Times opinion piece, “Biology is Dangerously Outpacing Policv” and a witness testimony at the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Hearing: “Biosafety and Risky Research: Examining if Science is Outpacing Policy and Safety”

• Biosecurity standards: Cyberbiosecurity in high-containment laboratories, Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, July 2023

• We’re hiring for several roles, including a research assistant, to support our international engagement practice area.

Updates on Gryphon’s projects will be posted on the Our Work page and LinkedIn.

Institute for Progress

The Institute for Progress (IFP) is a non-partisan research and advocacy organization dedicated to accelerating scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity’s future.

Focus areas

• Legislative 

  • Ongoing reauthorization of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act 

  • Establishing Independent Biorisk Management 

  • Biosecurity Congressional Staff Delegation Trip 

• Agency

  • Engaging with Project Next Gen and lessons learned from Operation Warp Speed

  • Workshop on Healthcare Reimbursement Codes

Publications

• Requests for information

  • How AI Can Help Prevent Biosecurity Disasters by Juan Cambeiro 

  • How DARPA Can Anticipate Downside Risk by Juan Cambeiro and Arielle D’Souza 

  • How DARPA Can Proactively Shape Emerging Technologies by Tim Hwang and Caleb Watney

  • Preparing for Pandemic Preparedness Legislation by Arielle D’Souza

• White papers

  • Indoor Air Quality Is the Next Great Public Health Challenge by Juan Cambeiro and Brian Potter 

  • How At-Home Rapid Tests Could Help Prevent the Next Pandemic by Ryan Remmel 

  • How the NSF Moved Faster than the NIH During COVID-19 by Maxwell Tabarrok

• News 

  • It’s past time to address the problem of indoor air quality. A new technology can help by Juan Cambeiro and Brian Potter 

  • Biden’s vaccine project needs to be more like Operation Warp Speed by Alec Stapp and Arielle D’Souza

You can subscribe to their newsletter using this link.

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security focuses on research to examine how scientific and technological innovations can strengthen health security.

Focus areas and projects: 

• We are focused on the reauthorization of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) and ensuring that Congress includes new measures to improve pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.

  • The Center organized over 30 stakeholders to send a letter to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee strongly urging reauthorization.

  • We are working to ensure critical bicameral, bipartisan legislative language makes it into the final PAHPA package, including the Securing Gene Synthesis Act, the Artificial Intelligence and Biosecurity Risk Assessment Act, the Disease X Act of 2023, and the Diagnostics, Testing and Preparedness Plan Act.

  • We are also focused on ensuring that the Senate’s appropriations report preserves key biosecurity language, including on funding a Disease X Medical Countermeasures Program at BARDA, strengthening the government's bioattribution capabilities, and regulating gene synthesis.

• We developed a model state indoor air quality act, which we will officially unveil during an August 17^th webinar. The model state law provides a legal foundation for states to improve indoor air quality and mitigate the spread of airborne infectious diseases, including during future pandemics.

• Our team is gearing up to attend the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) Working Group on the Strengthening of the Treaty and host an in-person side event, The BWC Global  Forum: Biotech, Biosecurity & Beyond. For more information, please contact Gigi Gronvall (ggronvall@jhu.edu) and Matthew Shearer (mshearer@jhu.edu). 

• Check out the July/August 2023 issue of Health Security online now, which includes a GCBR special feature.

Opportunities and Collaboration

• We are exploring potential policy or regulation that could reduce risks related to the intersection of AI and biotechnology. 

  • We are interested in connecting with those who have technical AI experience and are interested in safety policy at the convergence of AI and biosecurity.

• We are also interested in collaborations in the multidisciplinary field of critical infrastructure systems resilience, researching ways to prevent cascading collapse or crisis triggered by pandemics or other events.

• Our Health Security Ph.D. program is in its recruitment phase. See more details on the Ph.D. program here and contact Tara Sell (tksell@jhu.edu), Gigi Gronvall (ggronvall@jhu.edu), and Sarah Firestone (sschne27@jhu.edu) for questions. 

Sign up for their newsletter, Health Security Decoded here.  

NTI | bio 

The NTI | bio program works to identify gaps and promote lasting systemic change to improve biotechnology governance, strengthen biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and reduce global catastrophic biological risks.

Focus areas and projects

• We are beta testing and optimizing the Common Mechanism sequence screening tool to help industry safeguard DNA synthesis technology. We are establishing a global home for the Common Mechanism and other innovative risk reduction tools by establishing the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS). 

• We are preparing a report on safeguarding the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to engineering living systems. We are currently interviewing technical and policy leaders in AI, the life sciences, biosecurity, and related fields with the goal of developing a balanced report outlining benefits, risks, and governance options.

• We continue to prioritize building support for a UN Joint Assessment Mechanism to improve the assessment of outbreaks of unknown origin.

Publications and Reports

• We released “Benchtop DNA Synthesis Devices: Capabilities, Biosecurity Implications, and Governance,” a report which describes the current status of benchtop synthesis technology, outlines the biosecurity implications, and recommends governance actions to safeguard this technology. You can also watch the launch event here.

• We released a new digital report summarizing findings from our latest tabletop exercise, conducted in partnership with the Munich Security Conference, which was built around a fictional scenario involving a targeted attack with an engineered strain of Akhmeta virus.

Events/Opportunities

• We hosted Encouraging Congressional Action on Dual-Use Bioscience Research of Concern as part of an effort to engage US Congressional staff on effective oversight of dual-use bioscience research.

• Our annual Biosecurity Innovation and Risk Reduction Initiative (BIRRI) convened 35 participants from biotech industry, academia, biosecurity, governments, and international organizations to discuss emerging biological risks and develop practical solutions to reduce them.

• Applications for the seventh annual Next Generation for Biosecurity Competition are open now.

You can subscribe to their newsletter and follow NTI on social media for more information @NTI_WMD. Job opportunities will be posted here. Be sure to visit the newly updated website for the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS)! 

Open Philanthropy, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team 

Open Philanthropy’s Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team supports efforts to strengthen disease surveillance, the governance of dual-use research, policy development, and other activities that could reduce the threat of a major global disruption.

• Renewed grant support for work by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Nuclear Threat Initiative, respectively, to pursue activities aimed at mitigating global catastrophic biological risks.

• Provided support to the RAND Corporation to stand up a new biosecurity policy center as well as fellowships focused on biosecurity tech governance.

• Welcomed Adin Richards to the team, who is conducting research into agricultural resilience.

Looking for an Operations Associate to join our team — applications welcome!

SecureBio

SecureBio is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• The Nucleic Acid Observatory team is about to start an experiment featuring airplane wastewater from a major US airport, as well as samples from a wastewater treatment plant.

• The Far-UVC group is close to publishing its manuscript on safety and is exploring ways to study the efficacy of far-UVC for curbing indoor airborne pathogen transmission. To support this work, the team is hiring a Project Lead.

• The SecureDNA team continues to work apace on its gene synthesis screening software and anticipates releasing a public beta after the summer. The group is hiring a Marketing Relationship Manager to help onboard new partner companies following the beta release. 

• Policy: various team members are contributing to major efforts in the US and Europe to help mitigate biorisks from Large Language Models. The policy team is working with partners in government and industry to help de-risk upcoming AI releases.

• PPE: a report on the viability of Power-Assisted Personal Respirators (PAPR) to replace N95 masks as the go-to PPE of choice is due for release later in the summer; experimental work is ongoing to design a PAPR prototype that integrates sterilization using far-UVC.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily represent those of the newsletter authors. This is an independent project conducted outside of the authors’ organizational affiliations.