B3Africa
B3Africa is a partnership with two strategic aims: One is to create a harmonised ethical and legal framework between European and African partner institution. The second is to provide an "out-of-the-box" informatics solution for data management, processing and sharing that works with limited Internet access.
B3Africa is co-ordinated by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Partners include BBMRI-ERIC, Karolinska Institutet, Uppsala University, University of the Western Cape, Makerere University, Stellenbosch Universitt, International Agency for Research on Cancer , International Live Stock Research Institute, Medizinische Universitat Graz and the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria.
CRB's role in B3Africa
Work package 1, led by Jane Reichel, is tasked with drafting the ethical and legal framework. The framework is built on two pillars; the first sets out common ethical and legal threshold rules for all partners to abide by in order to use the informatics solution, based on the informed consent and ethical approval. This part will build on previous work conducted within European and international research collaborations, for example BBMRI-ERIC, H3Africa and Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. The second pillar focuses on cross-border sharing of data and samples, where Council of Europe and EU law requirements for transfer of data and sample will play an important role.
Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme. It is a CSA Action to bridge European and African biobanking and biomedical research.
contact
Contact at CRB: Jane Reichel and Deborah Mascalzoni at CRB are responsible for the ethical and legal framework.
- Jane Reichel, Professor of Administrative Law is leading the ethical and legal work.
- Deborah Mascalzoni, PhD Bioethics, Senior Researcher.
Biobanks and registries in research
We aim for a biobank and registry management that satisfies ethical and legal demands from the research community, the public and the individual.
Storing biobank data
BibankCloud is a 7th framework programme that aims to build the first open and viable platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for storage and analysis of digitized genomic data. CRB have been working with the ethical and legal issues.
ELSI Commmon Service for BBMRI-ERIC
BBMRI-ERIC aims to increase efficacy and excellence of European bio-medical research. We are part of the ELSI-common service.
Biobank and registry ethics & law
For many years, researchers at CRB have provided constructive advise on how to deal with ethical and legal aspects of research using human tissue material and personal data. We have collaborated with biomedical scientists and published our findings in peer reviewed journals. As a summary of this research we have compiled a list of publications with abstracts. We have grouped them thematically to help you find the ones you might be interested in reading. Our publications deal with ethical frameworks and policy, regulatory aspects of biobank and registry research, informed consent, ethical review, integrity concerns, trust, genetic testing, indicental findings, commercialization, public and patient perceptions, rare diseases, children & biobanks & genetics, and biobank studies.
