The Promise of Innovation: Organ Chips and the Making of Novel Biomedical Models

The objective of the proposed Brocher Stay is to revise and complete the full manuscript of a book that places organ chips in their sociohistorical context and examines the social shaping of this emerging biotechnology. The book draws on 8-years of qualitative, ethnographic research that has taken a rigorous mixed methods approach through extensive observation in an organ chip lab, in-depth interviews with organ chip researchers and other stakeholders, and content analysis of scientific publications and popular media. Methodologically the book employs constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz 2014) and situational analysis (Clarke 2005). Analyzing the social world that coalesces around these novel biotechnologies, the book project traces the emergence, construction, development, and uptake of organ chips. It offers an account of how novel ideas become technological realities, including the organizational and institutional investments and actions required for their success. Utilizing conceptual frameworks of science and technology studies and the history of technology, it tells the story of how organ chips have become the right tool for the job (Clarke and Fujimura 1992) of solving a key piece of the translational crisis. The project utilizes theoretical frameworks in the history and sociology of technology, including a constructivist lens and social worlds analysis (Clarke and Star 2008) to understand the complex social processes of technology construction and how novel scientific tools gain momentum. The book concludes with consideration of emergent ethical and social implications.

Drawing on intersections of science and technology studies (STS), medical sociology, and history of technology, the book traces how organ chips as novel biotechnologies are imagined, designed, and constructed, and how markets are brought into being. It offers a sociohistorical account of how technologies are crafted as the right tools for a particular job and how biomedical models become understood as human enough. The book argues that the specific shifts that encourage increasing collaboration between government, industry, and academic researchers is important for the particular way that new “translational technologies,” like organ chips, emerge and the value tradeoffs that shape their construction. Finally, it demonstrates how hype-building and scientific storytelling have become an essential part of scientific work, especially in the pursuit of translational medicine. In doing so, the book adds to growing literatures in three areas: (a) scientific work as a social endeavor, (b) construction of biomedical models, (c) biomedicalization, and (d) ethical conundrums in emerging technologies.

Humans and Organs on Chips: Modeling the Body in the Age of Translation

The overall objective of this application is to investigate the social and political dimensions of an emerging high-tech technology, and in so doing, contribute to STS studies of animal model use in biomedical research, the construction of human difference, and the political economy of university-industry research. The rationale for this dissertation is that it responds to two gaps in the literature: it investigates a technology that serves as a basic tool of research, rather than an end product, and it examines the construction of a technology while it is still under development. The proposed research has three specific aims: (1) investigate the social factors that shape investments in, and support of, organ chips and their use in biomedical research, (2) analyze how organ chip models are constructed, including how bioengineers assess the models’ accuracy and ability to stand in for the human organs they seek to mimic, and (3) ascertain how bioengineers and their institutions navigate university-industry relations, including concerns around proprietary rights and technology transfer. To engage directly with the ethical challenges that cut across each of these three aims, I will employ anticipatory governance and anticipatory ethics frameworks.

The expected outcomes of this project are:

1. An in-depth analysis of how bioengineers design emergent biotechnologies and their consequences;
2. An in-depth analysis of the social and political factors that shape investments in particular biotechnologies, with particular attention to shifting academic-industry relations;
3. A innovative study that investigates a highly anticipated biotechnology as it is being developed; and 
4. A framework to integrate anticipatory ethics approaches in the development of emerging biotechnologies.

The expected outcomes of my residency are:

1. Draft two empirical chapters of the dissertation.;
2. Finalize one empirical chapter of the dissertation (already drafted); and 
3. Sharpen the intellectual contributions of the dissertation through engagement with fellow Brocher residents.