Additional safety studies for Boston's planned Biosafety Level 4 lab, demanded by the Massachusetts Supreme Court last year, will further delay the opening of the facility, according to court documents filed by the NIH this week.

In November, 2007, an outside scientific panel concluded that the NIH had flubbed the safety evaluations for the lab, and in December, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that further safety studies were needed before the lab could open.

According to the court documents, the NIH estimates it will release the results of the new study "on or before April 30, 2009."

A lawyer for the Conservation Law Foundation, which sued the NIH in 2006 to stop the lab, told the Boston Globe in an article today that the delays could mean that the lab won't be able to open until early 2010.

University spokeswoman Ellen Berlin told The Scientist that BU "completely supports" the agency's further safety evaluation, and that it was too soon to estimate the timing for the biolab's opening.