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  1. MCMi Professional Development Activities

Training Course: Achieving Data Quality and Integrity in Maximum Containment Laboratories

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Photo monrage of attendees participating in the annual training course where they learn best practices for ensuring data quality and integrity in mock BSL-4 facilities that shows a lab, a BSL-4 suit and a classroom.
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Attendees participate in this annual training course where they learn best practices for ensuring data quality and integrity in BSL-4 facilities.

Current course | Background | Course descriptionFAQs | Scientific publicationsRelated information

Current course

April 15-19, 2024

Location: Galveston, TX or virtual

Registration now open:

UTMB information for 2024 course - Visit this page from our course partner for more information.

There is no cost to attend, but seating is limited, and pre-registration is required. Note that course attendees are invited based upon diversity of roles, responsibilities, and organization. Interested participants will be placed on a waitlist once seats are filled.

Background  

FDA helps protect the United States from chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and emerging infectious disease threats by ensuring that medical countermeasures (MCMs—for example, drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic tests) to counter these threats are safe, effective, and secure.

Scientists working to develop MCMs against several high-priority biological threat agents are at high risk of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infection and life-threatening disease, as there are no vaccines or treatments for these agents. Accordingly, much of the work to develop MCMs for these high-priority agents must be done in high and maximum biosafety level (BSL)-4 laboratories to prevent the agents from being released into the environment, and to provide maximum safety for the scientists.

The unique challenges of BSL-4

An instructor assists a participant into a BSL-4 protective suit before conducting simulated BSL-4 lab exercises during the 2015 data quality courseWhile necessary to ensure lab worker safety and prevent accidental release of dangerous pathogens, BSL-4 environments pose unique challenges to developing MCMs. For example, data generated to support a regulatory submission to FDA must be collected in accordance with quality systems, like good laboratory practice (GLP) regulations, to be useful and reliable, and to facilitate FDA review to ensure safety and efficacy. 

However, meeting data quality and integrity standards like GLP in a BSL-4 environment is challenging. Current practice is often inconsistent among laboratories due to technological infrastructure, available internal standard operating procedures, level of regulatory awareness, and individual breadth of experience and training. And completing even routine lab tasks in a protective BSL-4 suit can be difficult—imagine, for example, trying to pick up a small item, like a toothpick, while wearing two pairs of thick gloves.

To help address the challenges associated with ensuring data quality and integrity in regulated studies conducted in BSL-4 laboratories to support MCM development, FDA and the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston National Laboratory (UTMB) collaborate to provide an annual training course on how to meet GLP requirements in BSL-4 facilities (“data quality course”).

This popular course offers a unique opportunity for the regulatory and scientific communities to discuss complex issues in an interactive environment and identify and share best practices for ensuring data quality and integrity in BSL-4 facilities.

In addition to UTMB and FDA, other federal partners from the National Interagency Confederation for Biological Research (NICBR) provide support and resources for this course. These partners include:

  • From the National Institutes of Health
    • Office of the Director
    • National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
    • National Cancer Institute (NCI)
  • From the Department of Defense
    • U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC)
  • From the Department of Homeland Security
    • National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC)
Course description

The week-long, data quality course is designed to help researchers who conduct studies intended to support approval under the Animal Rule, which may be used to grant marketing approval of certain products when human challenge studies would not be ethical or feasible.

The course includes expert lectures and hands-on laboratory activities conducted in BSL-2 and BSL-4 training laboratories to emphasize the differences between biosafety levels, and the complexity of conducting laboratory activities in a BSL-4 environment. An online training module on GLP regulations (21 CFR Part 58) is included as a course pre-requisite. For additional information, visit the official UTMB course website.

Topics covered include:

  • Animal Rule regulations, and clinical applications of Animal Rule studies
  • An instructor assists a participant conducting a simulated BSL-2 lab exercise during the 2015 data quality courseAssay validation
  • BSL-2/3/4 comparison, with hands-on simulations
  • BSL-4 equipment, with hands-on work in a BSL-4 training lab
  • Disease agent characterization
  • GLP regulations
  • Good documentation practices
  • Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) protocols
  • Telemetry
  • Supportive care
  • Surrogate endpoints
  • Testing facility management
  • Veterinary pathology
  • Integration of quality assurance (QA) in BSL-4 studies
  • Advancement of MCMs on the international stage
Learning objectives for participants:
  • Determine requirements needed to conduct high-quality studies to develop appropriate MCMs
  • Identify criteria used to evaluate MCMs in animal models that reflect human disease
  • Examine modern methods to comply with data quality standards when conducting nonclinical studies in maximum containment

FAQs

 

Scientific publications

Eitzen M, Jones E, McCowan J, Brasel T. A Cross-Disciplinary Training Program for the Advancement of Medical Countermeasures. Health Secur. 2019 Jul/Aug;17(4):344-351. https://doi.org/10.1089/hs.2019.0032

Poster – Measuring the Success of the UTMB-FDA Course: Achieving Data Quality and Integrity in Maximum Containment Laboratories, presented in August 2017 (PDF, 833 KB) [ARCHIVED]

Poster – Measuring the Success of the UTMB-FDA Course: Achieving Data Quality and Integrity in Maximum Containment Laboratories, presented in August 2017 (PDF, 833 KB)

Related information

 

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