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Long abstract:

STS scholars have described the capitalization of the life sciences and identified a trend toward the financialization and assetization of biomedical R&D following twin crises in the early 21st century. Biomedicine remains big business; hopes for both treating disease and anchoring regional and national economic development hang on its promise. As a shift toward personalized and precision medicine reshapes the intellectual property landscape in biomedicine, the typical technology transfer model has evolved into a complex “innovation ecosystem” consisting of public-private and university-startup partnerships. These changes risk occluding sites of ethical governance and the visions of the public good and public benefit that animate and derive from contemporary biomedicine. Universities and academic medical centers—which often serve as innovation ecosystems’ “anchor institutions”—have tripartite missions that include public service and clinical care. It remains important to understand how these institutions understand and pursue these aims as large amounts of collective resources flow into biomedical innovation ecosystems that focus on tailored and high-cost treatments. This is especially important as struggles over the function and governance of universities are at a fever pitch. This talk describes in-progress research furthering recent STS scholarship on biocapital and bioeconomies, using an ethnographic approach to identify the practices of valuation and understandings of public good and public benefit that circulate in a precision medicine innovation ecosystem. It does so in the hope that the governance decisions that are made in these ecosystems can become more transparent, democratic, and just.