Exploring Stem Cell Research in East Asia: Governance, Translational Trials, and Ethical Activism

1. Spaces of Translation - an Ethnographic Approach to the Study of Academic and Public-Private Partnerships in Stem Cell Based Clinical Trials in Taiwan and Mainland China Achim Rosemann, International Science and Bioethics Collaborations Project, PhD Candidate and Course Tutor, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, UK, Brighton, BN1 9SJ, UK Email: ar253@sussex.ac.uk Tel. Taiwan: 0987436154 Junior Research Affiliate BIONET, BIONET Consortium for the Ethical Governance of Biological and Biomedical Research: Chinese–European Co-operation, EU 6th Framework / London School of Economics, UK

2. Stem Cell Research in Asia - an Institutional Approach to Scientific and Regulatory Re-Orientation • Explores socio-cultural, economic, political and regulatory issues related to stem cell research across the context of four societies in East Asia: Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan • Various fields of investigation • Governance and Regulation of Stem Cell Research • Translational Research and Clinical Trials • Public involvement in hESC • Bioethics Activism • Stem cell distribution and banking • etc

3. International Science and Bioethics Collaboration Project • Joint research project - ten social anthropologists from the universities of Cambridge, Durham and Sussex, with Prof Marilyn Strathern as PI • Project focuses on forms of knowledge production and exchange in international collaborations in the field of the biosciences, biomedicine and bioethics in nine Asian societies • Comparisons between the three subprojects unravel along five comparative dimensions: • Bioeconomics / Biowealth • Techno-scientific and Bioethical Pluralism • Capacity Building • Knowledge and Transnational Knowledge Flows • Biogovernance and Regulation

4. My own project • Focus on a range of organizational, regulatory and clinical issues in translational stem cell research projects that aim to develop therapies for neurodegenerative disorders, with a special focus on SCI and brain injuries • Sets out to compare the development of clinical applications between state funded university based research projects on the one hand and academic-private projects on the other • Aims to understand how opportunities, modalities of organization and forms of problematization differ across these two groups – as well as across the regulatory and politically diverging contexts of Taiwan and Mainland China • It does so by focusing on three analytical core areas

5. Three analytical Core Areas • Research organization and management: • Mobilization of financial resources • Strategic placement of research objectives • Implementation processes of scientific and international regulatory structures • Interactions and Experiences with local, national and international regulatory structures and institutions • Processes of scientific and ethical pioneering • i.e. the making of unprecedented scientific and ethical decisions, explored through the perspectives of scientists, clinicians and participating patients • Processes of stem cell procurement, exchange and circulation

6. The procuration, exchange, and movement of human reproductive tissues and from these tissues derived stem cells • Three interrelated themes open up here: • 1. The context and practice of the donation of reproductive human tissues, such as embryos, aborted fetuses or umbilical cord blood cells • 2. The processes of exchange that follow the biological modification of these tissues (read: their transformation to stem cells, their purification and /or pre-differentiation) • 3. The re-transfer of modified reproductive tissues/tissue-products into the diseased bodies of patients.

7. Methods • Semi-structured in depth interviews with tissue donors, clinicians, scientists, as well as corporate partners and bioethicists, if possible also government regulators and tissue recipients • Analysis of regulations, opinion pieces, scientific papers and relevant documents • Participant observation in setting of stem cell trials, informal conversations with patients, family members, scientists, clinicians, nurses • If possible – participant observation of project meetings and negotiation processes carried out between scientists and clinicians, scientists and patients, scientists and public regulators, as well as scientists and corporate partners • Analyses of websites, scientific papers, opinion pieces and other relevant text materials

8. Thank you!