The Committee on Bioethics will examine TSU projects

10 December 2018

The Committee on Bioethics has been created at TSU to consider research projects involving humans and animals. Its main task is the ethical examination of an experiment and the protection of the rights, interests, and health of participants in experiments aimed at creating new biomedical technologies.

The Committee on Bioethics will review project applications and assess how the conditions of the planned activities comply with international standards. The quality of the experiment and the possibility of publishing the results in high impact international journals depend on observing the standards.

- TSU implements a number of projects to develop new tools for the early diagnosis of cancer, cardiopathology, and metabolic disorders (diabetes, obesity, and others) and new approaches to treating them - says Yury Kistenev, director of the StrAU Institute of Biomedicine. - Laboratory animals are often involved in projects. In biomedical research, they play a huge role because the results can be applicable to humans.

Previously, a special commission at the Research Institute of Biology and Biophysics monitored compliance with ethical standards at TSU. Because of the increase in the number of studies in the interests of Russian health care, it became necessary to establish a specialized ethics committee. It consisted of experts from different TSU departments: scientists from the Biological Institute, the TSU Research Institute of Medical Materials, the Departments of Sports and Health Tourism, Sports Physiology, and Medicine, psychologists, and linguists. Natalya Krivova, the leading researcher at the TSU Laboratory of Experimental Physiology at the Research Institute of Biology, has been appointed the head of the new Committee on Bioethics.

According to Natalya Krivova, several applications are currently under consideration, among them a project to study the photoprotective properties of an experimental drug based on a colloidal cerium dioxide solution on a model of ultraviolet erythema in rats and a study by TSU radiophysicists to develop a microwave chamber design that warms a person's limb during frostbite in a controlled way and methods of heating with microwave radiation.The Committee on Bioethics has been created at TSU. It will consider research projects involving people and animals. The main task of the new structure is the ethical examination, protection of the rights, interests, and health of participants in experiments aimed at creating new biomedical technologies.