An 11-member panel convened by the National Institutes of Health to review plans for a high-security biomedical lab at Boston University said on Friday that the university’s neighbors needed to be included in reviews of threats posed by the lab’s research, and that NIH and university officials needed to operate more transparently to dispel “problems with trust,” according to The Boston Globe.

The panel, meeting for the third time, also released interim findings that included a call to re-evaluate the danger posed to the lab’s South End neighbors should hazardous bacteria or viruses escape.

Controversy over the university’s plans to open a Biosafety Level 4 lab has stretched on since 2003. The lab would be one of several in a new facility devoted to research on emerging infectious diseases.

The blue-ribbon panel that is now reviewing the project was created by the NIH director, Elias A. Zerhouni, after a National Research Council report last fall said that an earlier safety evaluation was “not sound and credible.”

Supporters of the lab said it would create jobs and tackle critical questions. Robert McCarron, vice president for state relations and general counsel of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, told the panel that there “is an urgent need in this country to conduct research aimed at finding causes, diagnoses, and cures for the alarming number of recently emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.” —Lawrence Biemiller