The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing: Best practices for users of Lactic Acid Bacteria
2019
Flach, Joost | dos S. Ribeiro, Carolina | van der Waal, Mark B. | van der Waal, Raymond X. | Claassen, Eric | van de Burgwal, Linda H.M.
Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) have great potential to advance human health and therefore see vast applications in pharmaceutical and food industries. Global collaboration and open innovation, where LAB are shared and their genomes are sequenced, are essential for the study and discovery of new underlying probiotic effects. However, recent efforts of the Nagoya Protocol (NP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity have created legal barriers on the access and use of genetic resources (such as LAB). This is to promote conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, by protecting the rights of local communities and their traditional knowledge. While these objectives are positively supported, industry users of LAB indicate that the legislative burden of the NP can be disproportionally high and therefore hampers knowledge valorization and R&D activities aimed at probiotic innovation. To this end, we set out to explore the implications of the NP for commercial users of LAB by delineating best practice solutions for the probiotic industry. We also review the innovation barriers associated with the default implementation of the NP and express the need for a multilateral system in which a set of standardized rules for efficient access to LAB are agreed between ratifying parties.
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