STS Social Studies of Science: Compound Solutions

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

Innovative networks of pharmaceutical companies, nonprofit agencies, and academics focusing on chemical compounds to treat widespread diseases constitute a dynamic site for examining the intersection of new technologies, global regulatory mechanisms, and social need. Until recently, pharmaceutical companies have focused little attention on developing new technologies for diseases that primarily affect the poor, because drugs or vaccines developed to intervene in these diseases generate profits too low to offset research and manufacturing costs. Yet Partnerships for Drug Production (PDPs) are now forming as large pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis, Eli Lilly, Otsuka, and Johnson & Johnson, are cultivating relationships with non-profit organizations, universities, governmental funding agencies, and private philanthropies and dedicating new facilities to an effort to develop compounds to treat neglected diseases. This project focuses on three questions pertaining to partnerships forming around tuberculosis and malaria treatment: 1) if innovative networks of pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and nonprofits will succeed in changing the current landscape of drug research and production; 2) the major dynamics shaping collaborative relationships and practices; and 3) the kinds of relationships forged across geographic regions in the course of collaborative compound research and development. The method is multi-site ethnography of four sites: 1) interviews of scientists, directors of pharmaceutical divisions for TB and malaria drug and vaccine research, Doctors Without Borders officers, academic researchers involved in collaborations, and nonprofit agencies for TB and malaria drug and vaccine research; 2) World Vaccine, Malaria and TB research, and Drug Discovery Partnership conferences; 3) visits to clinical trial sites where new TB and malaria drugs will be tested; and 4) environmental scanning of primary literatures. The project's broader impacts include contributions to social scientific literatures on networks, collaborative relationships, and global innovation and science. The research will also involve working with diverse communities of scientists, lab technicians, grassroots organizations, and staff workers, including in developing clinical trial sites. The result is broad-based transfers of technology and scientific capacity, as well as the active participation in a technology-based project of multiple sectors of society. Besides writing a book, Compound Solutions, that will summarize the project findings, the researcher will provide a graduate student experience in research methods and opportunities for publication; disseminate results of research through graduate and undergraduate courses drawing students from Global Studies, Bioethics, History of Medicine, Anthropology, and beyond; and present at social science and science studies conferences.