Difference between revisions of "Team:IIT Delhi/Attributions"

Dr. Zia Shaikh
Dr. Zia Shaikh is an assistant professor at DBEB, IIT Delhi and is the Professor-in-charge at iGEM IIT Delhi. He has been associated with the
team since the past 3 years and has played a vital role in ensuring smooth functioning of the team. He provided us with a well-furnished lab for
our project and was instrumental in getting funds for our team. Also, he helped us in the various aspects of our project, despite it not being his core area of research.
Dr. Stefan
Dr. Stefan is a visiting faculty, from Germany, at DBEB, IIT Delhi. He has been a guiding light for iGEM IIT Delhi since 2015. Even though he is a specialist in Molecular Biology, he was instrumental in our project’s computational analysis as well as team organization and management. He spent countless nights helping us troubleshoot our project and enabled us to present our project in a more detailed manner. India
In India, the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) in partnership with DBT (Department of Biotechnology), created an official guide to evaluate probiotics in the country, so any probiotic product needs to be on this guide´s pattern to be released in the market.
Before being approved and released, food is submitted to standardized tests for identification and characterization of its new chains, such as PCR, in vitro tests mimicking the gut environment, in vivo testing to check the effectiveness in live animals, safety assessment for human use, evaluation of efficacy in humans, also there are standards patterns that need to be followed for the process of food packing and management.
Currently, the probiotic market in India is dominated by multinationals, which mainly commercialize fermented food products. No companies or clinical trials that use engineered probiotics has come to our knowledge.
Mexico
In Mexico, all food that has been processed or produced by genetically modified organisms are considered transgenic, but food containing GM or transgenic compounds are not identified, even though there are biosecurity laws and norms for regulation, such as SEP, CIBIOGEM, SAGARPA, SEMARNAT, SHCP and the Federal Law for Protection of the Consumer.
In terms of the norm, the Official Mexican, Norm NOM-056-FITO-1995, is in force and regulates everything related to GM mobilization in the country, so all public and private company must fulfill the requirements in the norm to have their food with genetically engineered compounds transit through Mexico. Furthermore, the law of Biosecurity of GMO and the Federal Law for Protection of the Consumer controls the release for consumption and commercialization of pilot projects besides regulating importation and exportation of GM in the country. No companies or clinical trials that use engineered probiotics has come to our knowledge.
Sweden
In Sweden every substance or combination of substances that is provided under the pretense that it has a preventative or therapeutic effect on diseases in humans or animals states for a pharmaceutical, which is regulated by the Swedish Medical Products Agency (MPA). When this kind of probiotic is been prepared to be released the Swedish Gene Technology Advisory Board and the Swedish National Council of Medical Ethics are often involved and give out statements and input in regards to the applications for clinical trials. There all pharmaceuticals that contain any modified organism need to be labeled with “This product contains (a) genetically modified organism(s)”, and all of the trials regarding GM pharmaceuticals are posted on the Swedish Medical Products Agency’s website. In Europe, the following company working with engineered probiotics has come to our knowledge: ActoBio Therapeutics (part of Intrexon) in Belgium.
United States
Engineered probiotics are not regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration, as they are neither a food nor a drug. As a result, they currently do not require large clinical trials like other drugs in America. The following companies working with engineered probiotics has come to our knowledge: Azitra, Synlogic and ZBiotics.
Brazil
There exists no law that regulates genetically engineered probiotics, but in 2018 ANVISA, the Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency, opened up the public consultation and now genetically engineered probiotics were added to the regulation. Besides, there is no companies or clinical trials that use engineered probiotics. With this research, we were able to see that there is a growing movement of engineered probiotics mostly in the U.S., but that there still is a lack of laws and regulation all over the world to regulate these products before they can reach the market and the final consumers.