Paper short abstract:

I assess the impact of ‘All Japan’ life science policy-making on regenerative medicine (RM), in particular iPS, and its translation into medical products. I argue that it has led to the entrepreurialiation of pluripotency research, but with unintended consequences for its internationalisation.

Paper long abstract:

This article tries to assess the impact of life science policy-making on RM, in particular pluripotency, and its translation into products in Japan. Enormous investment into RM and policies intend to stimulate economic growth and to support the country's scientists in becoming the first to deliver iPS therapies to patients. These efforts have lead to a myriad of collaborative efforts with science institutions, regulatory agencies and industry, which involve entrepreneurial talents ranging from management, biobanking, investment, property rights and ethical review to negotiation with government agencies and industry and people skills. The entrepreneurial aspects of these life science collaborations are captured in the notion of bionetworking, which I use to analyse the various collaborative bioclusters that have come about as a result of Japanese assertive policies. I will argue that, first, policies that identify iPS with Japanese RM have overestimated the potential of iPS therapy and underestimated its consequences for other stem cell fields; second, "All Japan" policy, which seem to concentrate on Japan, in fact focuses on the international expansion of medical products; and, third, the regulatory facilitation of iPS has increased the entrepreneurialisation of RM in a number of unintended directions. The aim of this article is to increase the understanding of the friction points between self-assertive national policy-making on RM and its internationalisation.

Paper short abstract:

The paper is concerned with biomedical technologies and the entrepreneurial ways through which these vital technologies come to life. Focusing on Việt Nam it traces the enterprising, complex and networking ways through which stem cell research is transformed into profitable applications.

Paper long abstract:

Biotechnology has, in recent years, become a key growth industry on a global scale, promising economic and social benefits. The paper is concerned with biomedical technologies and the entrepreneurial ways through which these vital technologies come to life. Focusing on Việt Nam, an emerging frontier in Asian biotechnology, it traces the enterprising, complex and networking ways through which stem cell research and applications take place. The paper focuses on stem cell 'clinical trials' and examines the networked ways through which research processes are turned into entrepreneurial ventures. Of particular concern are network partnerships involving public bodies, policy makers and private interests that facilitate the process of turning clinical experiments into vetted therapies, which can subsequently become commercially available. A recently completed state-sponsored 'trial' that failed to produce any conclusive results, provides an interesting ethnographic case to consider. Despite inconclusive clinical results and the uncertain effects of stem cell applications, this process of clinical experimentation gave rise to two separate stem cell businesses.

The ethnographic case presented here seeks to add to anthropological reflections on emerging 'bioeconomies' and the ways in which human biological materials are being turned into a commodities, by shifting the focus of attention from the production of 'biovalue' as rooted in the future and the promise of cure towards tracing the processes through which biomedical enterprises and science-based industries take shape in the present.

Paper short abstract:

Infertility treatment is a thriving business. Observing cases of Japan and the Netherlands, this paper discusses how presence and absence of regulations, and commodification and non-commodification of IVF may differently influence women’s health both mentally and physically.

Paper long abstract:

Infertility treatment is a thriving business in Japan. In the country, the age of first marriage among women is being advanced, and the number of women undergoing infertility treatment is increasing. The treatment - here In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF)- is neither covered by health insurance nor regulated, so, women can attempt to become pregnant as long as they want. In the field, the author met a number of women undergoing IVF for many years. In the sense a great source of income for maternity clinic is IVF, infertility treatments is commodified.

A number of women going through IVF is increasing in the Netherlands, too, but IVF is regulated: up to three attempts are insured and women above 45 are not recommended to undergo IVF. As IVF is performed in public hospitals, it is not commodified. So, in one situation there is 'freedom' for women without limits, and in the other there is limits of 'freedom' where the treatment is clearly regulated.

This paper, based on the author's observation and conversations of women and couples under IVF in both countries, analyses effects of commodification of IVF on the health of women with infertility problems, both mentally and physically. Does absence of regulations benefit women's dream to have children in the end? How do women in the Netherlands deal with regulations in pursing their dreams to have children? In short: How does presence and absence of regulations, and commodification and non-commodification of IVF influence women's health in cases I observe?

Paper short abstract:

Forming new ecologies of bioenterpreneurship through bionetworking: the case of Stempeutics

Paper long abstract:

In this article, by using the example of Stempeutics - an Indian private stem cell company, we aim to understand the biomedical, social-economic and policy contexts that lead to transformations in the fields of stem cell research, cell-based product development, therapy provisions and regulatory capacity building in India. The case of Stempeutics, its metamorphosis over a period of one decade, from a maverick 'experimental' stem cell therapy providing centre to a 'responsible' cell-based product development company highlights the following: (a) Co-production of technology and economy is guided by creation of new configurations, through 'bionetworking', that is ahead of existing forms of collaborations (b) Forward looking bioenterpreneurial initiatives put emphasis on 'harmonization' of regulatory arrangements at local, national and global levels keeping in mind anticipated flow of technology and economy, thereby, devises tools and methods having specific characters for countries that are in the process of adopting 'novel' regulatory standards. (c) Innovation (here, in stem cell product development) results from increasingly complex interactions at the local, national and global levels among various stakeholders. In the process, a leader or trend-setter (as Stempeutics is projected) is viewed as a 'hegemonic' player in the bioenterpreneurial market place, thereby restricts the spill-over effect of the innovation.

Paper short abstract:

The convergence of humanitarian governance architectures and corporate interests in nutrition interventions in South Africa rests on a future-oriented logic that employs ideas about digestion, immunity and wellness to reconfigure food supplementation in pregnancy and to the HIV positive population.

Paper long abstract:

Food's reconfiguration as pharmaceutical in biomedical regimes of knowledge has been considered by scholars across two themes: (1) food supplementation as humanitarian intervention, predicated on a particular value of life and delivered in a situation of 'çrisis', with a specific temporal horizon characterised by short term impacts, and (2) food supplementation as commercial entity, marketed as an enhancer of 'wellness' or potential, predicated on notions of risk across a much broader temporal frame. The more recent convergence of humanitarian design and corporate interest requires inquiry into the semiotic manouevres by which such a shift has been possible, and we contend that the tropes of 'digestion', 'immunity' and 'vitality' are central to this reconfiguration. We consider nutriceuticals and ready-to-use-therapeutic foods as they are deployed by state and commercial actors in South Africa, where two key figures are the focus of state and corporate interests in nutrition intervention: the pregnant woman and the HIV positive population. These two figures, as biopolitical expressions of post-Apartheid regimes of knowledge, care, and governance, illustrate how state distribution and corporate marketing of food supplements in South Africa employ a future-oriented logic that appeals to notions of power, energy, and potential. The convergence of these two figures in relation to 'digestion,' 'immunity' and 'vitality' reveals the logic of therapeutic foods not merely as humanitarian technologies that reconfigure crisis as chronic condition - a case of the temporary becoming permanent - but as constitutively premised on new potentialities, in which the temporary can (re)shape the future.