Key Dates

Related Announcements

None

Issued by

Office of The Director, National Institutes of Health (OD)

Purpose

Institutional Biosafety Committees (IBCs) serve as a critical linchpin in ensuring the safe and responsible conduct of research. Since the issuance of the NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant or Synthetic Nucleic Acid Molecules (NIH Guidelines) in 1976, IBCs have expanded in number to the thousands and have voluntarily expanded their roles to encompass new research approaches as they arise.

IBCs continue to serve as a pillar of biosafety oversight and are essential in building trust on behalf of the biomedical research enterprise. Under the NIH Guidelines, this expectation is a mandate and as such, NIH is reinforcing its commitment to working with IBCs to ensure transparency in biosafety oversight by updating its implementation expectations to protect the safety of all Americans.

To maximally meet the transparency aims of the NIH Guidelines, on June 1, 2025:

• The NIH Office of Science Policy (OSP) will publicly post the rosters of all active IBCs registered with OSP via the IBC-Registration Management System (RMS).  These rosters will include all members identified by name and role on the committee. In addition, NIH will be posting the contact information for the IBC Chair, Biological Safety Officer, and IBC Contact.
• NIH expects that approved meeting minutes from all IBC meetings occurring on, or after this date will be posted publicly on an institutional website. It is NIH's expectation that minutes will be posted immediately after approval and once all appropriate and allowable redactions have been made. Please note that the provisions of this notice only apply to meetings taking place on, or after June 1, 2025. Minutes from meetings before that date do not need to be posted but still must be provided to members of the public upon request. However, institutions may opt to voluntarily post this information in the spirit of transparency. 

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

NIH Office of Science Policy

NIHGuidelines@od.nih.gov