Medical Safety & Global Health
Open Access

Katia Pauwels

Biography

Katia Pauwels obtained her PhD in Applied Biological Sciences in 2003 at the Free University of Brussels. She joined the Biosafety and Biotechnology Unit of the Scientific Institute of Public Health in the same year and started her activities mainly with the risk evaluation of biosafety regulatory dossiers and the elaboration of recommendations related to the contained use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and pathogens.

Research Interest

1. Epigenetics: a view on how data generated in this domain actually contribute to a better risk assessment of GMOs? 
2. ‘Omics’: a view on how the abundance of information generated could raise challenges as regards the extraction of information with discernable biological meaning that could contribute to the risk assessment of genetically modified organisms. 
3. Zinc finger nucleases, TALE nucleases and homing endonucleases; the approach of nuclease based genetic modification may offer a new perspective in the field of genetic engineering of organisms. How the legal status of this approach could be considered in the light of the current GM regulatory framework ? 
4. Synthetic biology: does the risk assessment methodology for GMOs suit the risk assessment of organisms/products obtained by approaches of synthetic biology. 
5. Risk assessment of animal cell cultures 
6. Risk assessment of lentiviral vectors for research purposes 
7. Reesearch areas related to the risk evaluation of regulatory dossiers within the framework of the EU Directive 2009/41/EC on the contained use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) (regional competence including the regulation on the contained use of pathogenic organisms) 
8. Research areas related to the risk evaluation of regulatory dossiers within the framework of the EU Directive 2001/18/EC and the EU Regulation 1829/2003 related respectively to the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms into the environment and placing on the market.

Relevant Topics