Intellectual Property and Opportunities for Food Security in the Philippines

By 2050, the Philippine population is projected to increase by as much as 41 percent, from 99.9 million to nearly 153 million people. Producing enough food for such an expanding population and achieving food security remain a challenge for the Philippine government. This paper argued that intellectual property rights (IPR) can play a key role in achieving the nation’s current goal to be food-secure and provided examples to illustrate that the presence of sound intellectual property (IP) helps foster research, development, and deployment of agricultural innovations. This paper also offered key recommendations about how the IP system can be further leveraged to enable access, creation, and commercialization of new and innovative agricultural practices and technologies to enhance the nation’s agricultural productivity, meet rice self-sufficiency, and sustain food security

BIOTECH IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: FROM A GENE REVOLUTION TO A DOUBLY GREEN REVOLUTION?

International Development, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Enclosing the Global Plant Genetic Commons

Looks at policies related to the development, use, and control of plant genetic resources, with a focus on property rights in relation to changing technology and its impact on food security in developing countries

The Metagenomics and Metadesign of the Subways and Urban Biomes (MetaSUB) International Consortium inaugural meeting report.

The Metagenomics and Metadesign of the Subways and Urban Biomes (MetaSUB) International Consortium is a novel, interdisciplinary initiative comprised of experts across many fields, including genomics, data analysis, engineering, public health, and architecture. The ultimate goal of the MetaSUB Consortium is to improve city utilization and planning through the detection, measurement, and design of metagenomics within urban environments. Although continual measures occur for temperature, air pressure, weather, and human activity, including longitudinal, cross-kingdom ecosystem dynamics can alter and improve the design of cities. The MetaSUB Consortium is aiding these efforts by developing and testing metagenomic methods and standards, including optimized methods for sample collection, DNA/RNA isolation, taxa characterization, and data visualization. The data produced by the consortium can aid city planners, public health officials, and architectural designers. In addition, the study will continue to lead to the discovery of new species, global maps of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) markers, and novel biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Finally, we note that engineered metagenomic ecosystems can help enable more responsive, safer, and quantified cities

Scientific innovation for the sustainable development of African agriculture

The African continent has considerable potential to reap the benefits associated with modern agricultural biotechnology. Plant biotechnology and breeding represent an invaluable toolbox to face the challenges of African agriculture, such as food and nutrition security, environment protection, soil fertility, and crop adaptation to new climatic conditions. As Africa has only relatively recently adopted agricultural biotechnology, it has the opportunity to harness the immense knowledge gathered over the last two decades while avoiding some of the difficulties experienced by early adopters. High-level research and education systems together with a specific regulatory framework are critical elements in the development of sustainable biotechnology-based agriculture and industry. The more actors that are involved in Research & Development applied to nutritionally and important local crops, the faster Africa will generate its future African innovators. Here, we discuss the contribution of plant biotechnology to a transformative African agriculture that combines intensification of land productivity and environmental sustainability

The global inequity of COVID-19 diagnostics : challenges and opportunities

Diagnostics for COVID-19 have advanced at an unprecedented pace over the last two years. Testing is a critical pillar of pandemic control, and is required for epidemiological tracking, treatment, and surveillance. Despite high quality SARS-CoV-2 viral diagnostic capability, there are vast global inequities in access. The Virology, Immunology, and Diagnostics Working Group(WG) of the COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition (CRC) brings together experts in immunology, infectious diseases, and microbiology to advocate for equity-based COVID-19 research, prioritising solutions driven by communities in low-income and lower middle-income countries (LMICs).1 This commentary shares the unique perspective of the WG on the asymmetry in COVID-19 diagnostic access between low-income and high-income settings, the barriers to these disparities, and highlights opportunities to remedy these inequities.PostprintPeer reviewe

The Limits of Responsible Innovation: Exploring Care, Vulnerability and Precision Medicine

Drawing on insights from feminist and Science and Technology Studies writing on care and vulnerability, this paper will critically explore conceptualisations of responsibility, care and vulnerability in relation to contemporary approaches to Responsible Innovation (RI). Drawing on examples of some of the social and ethical challenges of precision medicine, we highlight the on-going, distributed and complex nature of innovation and responsibilities in relation to markets, patient and carer experience and data practices associated with these new technologies to highlight some of the limits of RI. We end by reflecting on the implications of our analysis for the social and ethical challenges of precision medicine and RI more generally