RIHOPHE - Eurasian Chemical Institutions

Research Institute of Hygiene, Occupational Pathology, and Human Ecology (RIHOPHE) St. Petersburg

p/o Kuz'molovskii township, Vsevolozhskii district, Leningrad region, 188663 Russia
Telephone: 7 (812) 534-92-16
Fax: 7 (81370) 92-506
gioeh@lens.spb.ru

First Annual Chemical Science and Commercialization Conference
Presentation

Introduction (English) (Russian)
"Test System for Preclinical Assessment in vitro of Embryotoxic Properties of Pharmacological Preparations with Prognosis of Their Hazard for Human Embryogenesis" (English) (Russian)

Posters

Mission Statement

General
Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Research Institute of Hygiene, Occupational Pathology and Human Ecology" (hereinafter, the Institute), Federal Department of Medical Biological and Extreme Problems, Ministry of Public Health of the Russian Federation, was founded according to the order of the Government of USSR no. 2265-RS of January, 1962. According to the order of the Government of the Russian Federation no. 384 of 20.04.1995 is subordinated to the Federal Department of Medical Biological and Extreme Problems at the Ministry of Public Health of the Russian Federation (hereinafter, "Medbioextrem" Federal Department).

The Institute is a commercial organization.
The functions of Institute Founders belong to "Medbioextrem" Federal Department and the Ministry of State Property of the Russian Federation.
The Institute is a legal entity, has its own property, payment and other accounts, including those in foreign currency, in various credit organizations, blanks, and stamps, including a round stamp with the names of the Institute and "Medbioextrem" Federal Department. The Institute has the right to conclude agreements and make other deals, acquire property and personnel non-property rights and liabilities, to act as a plaintiff and defendant in civil and arbitral courts in keeping with laws of the Russian Federation.
The Institute accounts for liabilities by its entire property. The Institute accounts for no State liabilites and vice versa.

Institute's Activities

The Institute is founded both to serve for social needs and to be profitable.

The Institute acts along the following main lines:

working out medical and sanitary foundations to ensure chemical safety of both the people working with highly toxic chemicals (including chemical agents) and the population residing in ecologically unfavorable areas;
ecosanitary, medical biological, and chemical analytical investigations; conducting health and ecological monitoring with the aim of establishing the interrelation between the health status of working and general populations and both labor and environmental comditions; working out means for their sanitation;
studying the toxicity and hazards of chemicals and drugs in animal experiments, and revealing mechanisms of their toxic action and pathogenesis of acute and chronic exposure; investigating therapeutic agents (including antidotes) for treating exposure and predicting responses of human and animal bodies to these agents, and their preclinical testing;
hygienic rating of chemicals in any environmental subject and in cases of polluting skin surfaces in routine conditions and in emergency situations;
devising methods of indicating chemicals in air, water, soil and silt sediments, biological media, plants, food-stuffs, and other media to monitor pollutants;
studying the influence of chemicals and therapeutic agents on developing and progressing pathologies of chemical etiology (including occupational pathology) in working and general populations in polyclinic and clinic conditions; devising methods of diagnosing, treating, and preventing occupational diseases; predicting the impact of harmful chemical exposure on humans;
working out the basis for the procedure of large-scale automated medical examinations of different contingents of working and general populations; medical support of the use of automated diagnosing systems in practice;
performing medical biological and analytical testing of civil self-defense means, including tear and irritating agents;
conducting medical (by occupational diseases), toxicological hygienic, ecosanitary, chemical and other kinds of expert examinations under various conditions, including cases of large-scale exposure and emergencies
hygienic and ecological certification of industrial facilities, industrial and natural objects and territories; conducting complex medical and ecological expert examinations aimed at assessing the reasons and impact to human health and environment associated with ecological offenses;
sanitary and ecological assessment of the environmental impact of designed and operating industrial facilities, including development of "Environmental safety" sections in the pre-design and design documentation;
conducting research on the storage and destruction of chemical weapons and operation with toxic chemicals (included in Lists 1-3 of the Convention on Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) and wastes of chemical weapons destruction technologies, as well as other toxic chemicals;
development of methodical bases and implementation of certification of laboratories at sanitary epidemiological stations and research institutes;
breeding and delivering to customers experimental animals;
medical services for the population;
commercial chemical analyses of environmental and other objects;
conducting theoretical, applied, expert and other research works in the above-mentioned fields;
organization of pilot and small-scale industrial production of new medical equipment, chemical substances, reagents, and drugs;
post-graduate (clinical and other post-graduate courses) and higher-level (doctoral courses) education;
organizing and conducting scientific and practical conferences and seminars;
publishing activities;
commercial activities.

Laboratories functioning at the Institute

Laboratory of general toxicology and hygienic regulation;
Laboratory of special hygienic investigations;
Laboratory of industrial and aquatic ecotoxicology;
Laboratory of physical and chemical methods of analysis;
Clinic of occupational pathology and long-term effects of chemicals;
Laboratory of automation of large-scale medical examinations;
Clinic of laboratory animals (vivarium).

Staff

The Institute's staff comprises 144 people, including research workers (68), engineers and technicians (52), service workers (16), and administration (8). The research staff comprises 10 Doctors of Sciences (specialize in toxicology, pharmacology, hygiene, occupational medicine, and psychiatry) and 28 PhDs (specialize in the above areas plus biochemistry and analytical chemistry).

Certifications The Institute has been certified by:
- the Ministry of Public Health of the Russian Federation for development of regulatory and methodical documentation in hygiene and occupational hygiene, including development of methods for analysis of chemicals in environmental samples (Certificate no. CA 13.88 of 02.04.2004);
- "Medbioextrem" Federal Department for conducting sanitary epidemiological expertises, investigations, toxicological hygienic, and other assessments of special-purpose products and design materials (Certificate no. 003 of 29.01.2004);
- by the Ministry of Industry, Science and Technologies for scientific research work (Certificate no. 4056 of 29.04.2002);
- by Russian Agency for Munitions for conducting scientific research in the field of storage and destruction of chemical weapons, operation with toxic chemicals and wastes of chemical weapons destruction technologies, as well as circulation of toxic chemicals with aims and quantities not prohibited by the Convention (Licence no. CWD-0022 of 17.01.2002).

The Institute has no Russian and international (GMP, GLP) certificates but expects to be certified.

Facilities

The Institute has a vivarium. The total area of the facility 3685 m ² (a 3-floor building) designed and built in 1976. Accommodates simultaneously near 10000 animals, including mice, rats, hamsters, rabbits, and dogs. Areas for separate accommodation of different animals and species, isolation, surgical treatment, feed acceptance and storage, utensils cleaning and desinfection, as well as experimentation are available. The vivarium needs to be reconstructed to fully meet GLP requirements, the design work is presently being performed in collaboration with CRDF and the BII RABBITT Program.

Equipment

The equipment available for research works and developing commercial projects includes:

- equimpent for chemical and biochemical studies: HP 5890 gas chromatographs with FID and NPD, Tsvet-500 gas chromatograph (Russia) with PID, as well as a Shimadzu QP-500 GC-MS system (EI mode), a Shimadzu PharmaSpec UV-1700 UV-visible spectrophotometer, photoelectocolorimeters, pH-meters, Synergy HT system for immunoferment analysis, Zeiss microscopes, "Nanofor-01" capillary electrophoresis system, etc.; as well as equipment for sample chemical and biological sample treatment (centrifuges, heaters, evaporation systems, shakers, refrigerators, etc.);

- dignostic medical equipment: electroneuromiograph, heat vision instruments, computerized universal diagnostic complex, computerized complex for iridodiagnostics, encephalograph, pupillometers, and other standard diagnostic equipment.

- exposure chambers for toxicology studies and equipment for recording physiological parameters of animals.

The ISTC Commication Support Project (ISTC CSP #28) is presently in progress (commencement date June 1, 2004; duration 12 months). The outcome of the Project should include generation of an information channel (at the hardware level), to establish telephone and Internet connections, to create local area network, to connect to existing telecommunication resources of telemedicine, to provide access to international databases and specialized electronic libraries in Russia and abroad, to provide modern registration means for experiments and data processing, to provide modern means to present and discuss the information received ine experiments in working groups, and to extend possibilities for realization of Institute's commercial projects.

International Collaboration

In 2000-2001, the Institute performed a "Study of Delayed Effects of BSM-GB, BSM-GD, BSM-VX Lixiviation Products" in collaboration with Parsons and Bettelle firms (USA).

Collaboration Interests

The Institute is interested in collaboration with and financial support from industrial companies to:

- put in pilot and serial industrial production of an automated binocular pupillometric unit KSRZRts-01 for toxicology studies on new drugs and assessment of the efficiency and side effects of new pharmacological preparations on the basis of simultaneous measurements of pupil diameter and pupillary response to light stimulus from both eyes" (the essence is described in the paper "Pupillometry as a Method for Toxicoly Testing of New Drugs and Preclilinal and Clinical Assessment of the Biological Activity of Pharmacological Preparations" submitted to the Conference);

- design, test, and put in pilot production a universal acoustic optical tunable filter analyzer for CW agents in environmental and biological objects (the essence is described in corresponding paper submitted to the Conference).

Patents

The Institute holds two Russian Patents:

Grachev, V.I., Kazenashev, V.F., Maiorov, G.S., Nikolaev, V.A., Mishin, V.V., Pelishchuk, V.K., and Tsimbal, F.A., Method and instrumentation for registration of pupillary responses , RU Patent no. 2123797.
Grachev, V.I., Kazenashev, V.F., Kiselev, M.F., Mishin, V.V., Pelishchuk, V.K., and Tsimbal, F.A., Method and instrumentation for registration of pupillary responses , RU Patent no. 2207040.

One patent application is presently under consideration: Tsimbal, F.A., Grinenko, A.I., Kutsalo, A.L., and Shtal'berg, O.V., Method for diagnosis of opiate drug intoxication, RU Patent Appl. no. 2002125594/14(026995)