Team:UI-Indonesia/Human Practice/Expert Talking

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Professor Masafumi Yohda

Biotechnology and Life Science
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan

YOHDA sensei is a biotechnology and life science professor, and he’s also a lecturer in Engineering in Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT). He came to Indonesia as a guest lecture in Society of Biological Engineering Universitas Indonesia Student Chapter (SBE-UISC) featuring UI Synbio Club Seminar entitled “Application of Biotechnology in Industry.” He has come to several Nobel Prize Meetings and very famous, yet he still gave us many advices on our Lab Work. Luckily, he’s here with us to provide some information regarding synthetic biology application projection in Asia, also problems involving application of Synbio in Japan. Check it out!

Synthetic biology really has big prospects in the world. We need ideas––yet we need breakthroughs if we want to achieve more from it. Asia is being forward in many aspects over the past several years. However, Major findings from the Wilson Center on “Tracking the Growth of Synthetic Biology” in 2013 shows that the number of entities conducting research and commercial applications in Synthetic Biology in Europe and US is very high, but Asia has been left behind. Japan––as the most developed country in Asia––is known of its high technology development. Depart from this statement; Professor Yohda from TUAT (Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology) stated that there are restrictions in Japan towards GMO application. This condition biased the usual fact and in real life, a part of Japanese people are intolerant of science implementation, so the government of Japan protect all of the people including the conventionalist by restricting synthetic biology and especially GMO. Safety module might works, but back to reality. Every machine that works can’t be 100% effective, and so is safety module. There’s always a chance of failure of microorganism to escape and contaminate environment, especially because the size of microorganism and bacteria is very small. Although there are chances of failure, Prof. Yohda as a scientist wants a higher degree of Synbio development in Japan. He’s excited about synthetic biology development because it will cope problems many industries. People need to take more risks and accept this novel development. [Read more…]

Aroem Naroeni, DEA, Ph.D.

Biosafety Officer
Institute of Human Virology and Cancer Biology
Universitas Indonesia

Mrs. Aroem Naroeni is IHVCB’s Biosafety Officer located in Salemba, Jakarta. Finishes her Ph.D. in L'Universite d'Aix Marseille II in “Infectious Diseases and Tropical Pathology”, she’s been doing a research on breast cancer stem cells and microenvironment, and HIV antiviral drugs. She’s very concerned with biosafety and risk assessment in medical research and currently she’s developing a guideline for safety and risk assessment to be applied all over Indonesia. The coolest thing is: this will be the first one Indonesia ever have! She knows about our project we’re doing in the lab, so her point of view really matters. Find out her thoughts about our project’s safety assessment and the prospect of synthetic biology development in Indonesia!

Synthetic biology has been developing in Indonesia, but actually there are many issues involved. As a developing country, Indonesia hasn’t had a safety guideline regarding research in Synthetic Biology. But luckily, Indonesian are very “easy-going” and people will try to accept it as long as it can solve problems. A prove of it is shown by a biosimilar products such as erythropoietin, diarrhea drug, and other stuffs that has been commercially published. However, many aspects should be reconsidered including ethics, sustainability, and safety. UI is currently developing a guideline for biosafety and risk assessment for the first time ever in Indonesia. For our project, some things that need to be emphasize is we need to go through more specific study of the safety of virulence gene that would be inserted in the bacteria, and for further research we have to try it in in-vitro, preclinical (animal), and even clinical (human) for the last object. [Read more…]