Institutional Biosafety Committee

The goal of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) is to help facilitate research and ensure it is done safely, ethically, and legally.

The NIH Guidelines are a set of best practices adopted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1976. They define how to conduct research with recombinant DNA (rDNA) or synthetic nucleic acids (SNA) in a safe and responsible manner. The NIH Guidelines were developed to protect both the researchers working with this material and the environment from being contaminated by recombinant material or organisms.

Any organization receiving funding from the NIH is expected to follow the requirements listed in the NIH Guidelines. Since CSUF receives funding as an Institution, all researchers at CSUF are expected and required to abide by the NIH Guidelines while conducting biological research, even if their individual grant or lab does not receive funding from the NIH. Failure to abide by the NIH Guidelines can result in suspension or termination of funding for all government-supported research at CSUF.

The NIH Guidelines require that most work involving rDNA or SNA undergo registration with, review by, and approval from the CSUF Institutional Biosafety Committee. In addition, research involving certain biohazards, regardless of whether or not it includes rDNA/SNA, must be registered, reviewed, and approved by our IBC. This is done through the biological use registration (BUA), a document that describes the important regulatory and safety information for the biological research performed by your lab.