Human practice

We are aware that social aspects of synthetic biology are important for the successful clinical implementation of synthetic biology in the future. Safety, regulations, ethics, cost, efficiency and acceptance are all important also to our project (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Different social aspects that can affect the success of therapy based on synthetic biology.

Our goal was to make a contribution to the medicine. Although our study shows promising results and the therapeutic implementation of such a system seems tempting, we realize that for the actual implementation of our idea, it is necessary not only to collaborate with professionals from different fields but also to take into account the views and concerns of the broader public.

For this reason we organized meetings with different stakeholders regarding medical, ethical, regulatory and other questions (Figure 2):

• Meetings with physicians whose specialties are the diseases and therapies which we thought might benefit from the application of synthetic biology. A specialist for viral hepatitis, a specialist for surgical wound healing, a cardiologist and an interventional radiologist advised us on the opportunities to implement our envisioned therapy, on the best envisioned practices for the introduction of microcapsules into the body and on potential dangers.
• We met with patients with viral hepatitis C and asked them about their views on the envisioned therapy and other applications of synthetic biology.
• We corresponded with the president of the Slovenian Medical Ethics Committee.
• We met with a representative from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment responsible for biosafety.
• We performed a survey of the perception of synthetic biology and our project mainly within the student population and among journalists that can strongly influence the public attitude towards applications of new technologies.
• We established a network of links with high schools in Slovenia in order to disseminate the idea and results of the project and synthetic biology in general to Slovenian high school students and their teachers and attract them to this fascinating area of research.

Figure 2. Participation of all stakeholders to exploit the advantages of synthetic biology.

We are grateful to all the people who took their time to talk to us or to participate in our survey.