The Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) is a university-wide review body that oversees activities involving potentially hazardous biological agents. The IBC ensures that research activities using these materials and conducted at UMass Dartmouth are in compliance with the NIH Guidelines, Federal, State and Local laws and regulations. UMass Dartmouth is committed to ensuring the safe handling, storage, and disposal of potentially harmful biohazardous materials for research or instructional projects. The biohazardous materials of particular concern that are covered by the IBC include:
- Recombinant DNA (rDNA) or transgenic plants, animals, and microbes
- Infectious agents pathogenic or infectious bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites or nucleic acids (prions) or agents of unknown pathogenicity to humans, plants, or animals]
- Drug resistant bacteria, including those containing plasmids specifying drug resistance
- Human tissue or body fluids & nonhuman primate materials (blood, blood components, tissues and body fluids and potentially infectious cultured human or animal cells)
- Tissues treated with pathogenic agents or transfected or otherwise treated with rDNA
- Select agents and biologically derived toxins
- Research that involves any of the above materials with animal and/or human subjects
- Xenotransplantation
- Stem cells
The IBC must, at times, communicate and coordinate review and approval of research projects with the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) and the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The IBC may also provide recommendations for education and training related to biosafety for all of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's faculty, staff and students that may be involved in the use of such materials.