STS Social Studies of Science: Compound Solutions

制药公司、非营利机构和学者组成的创新网络，专注于用化合物治疗广泛传播的疾病，构成了一个动态的网站，可以研究新技术、全球监管机制和社会需求的交叉。直到最近，制药公司几乎没有把注意力放在为主要影响穷人的疾病开发新技术上，因为为干预这些疾病而开发的药物或疫苗产生的利润太低，无法抵消研究和制造成本。然而，随着诺华、礼来、大冢和强生等大型制药公司与非营利组织、大学、政府资助机构和私人慈善机构建立关系，并致力于开发治疗被忽视疾病的化合物的努力，药品生产伙伴关系(PDP)正在形成。该项目关注与结核病和疟疾治疗相关的三个问题：1)制药公司、科学家和非营利组织的创新网络是否会成功地改变当前的药物研究和生产格局；2)形成合作关系和实践的主要动力；以及3)在合作化合物研究和开发过程中形成的跨地理区域的关系类型。该方法是四个站点的多站点民族志：1)对科学家、结核病和疟疾药物和疫苗研究的药剂部主任、无国界医生官员、参与合作的学术研究人员和非营利性机构的结核病和疟疾药物和疫苗研究的采访；2)世界疫苗、疟疾和结核病研究以及药物发现伙伴会议；3)访问将测试结核病和疟疾新药的临床试验站点；以及4)对原始文献进行环境扫描。该项目的更广泛影响包括对有关网络、合作关系和全球创新和科学的社会科学文献的贡献。这项研究还将涉及与不同社区的科学家、实验室技术人员、基层组织和工作人员合作，包括开发临床试验场地。其结果是技术和科学能力的广泛转让，以及社会多部门积极参与一个以技术为基础的项目。除了撰写一本总结项目成果的书《复合解决方案》外，研究人员还将为研究生提供研究方法和出版机会的经验；通过研究生和本科课程传播研究成果，吸引来自全球研究、生物伦理学、医学史、人类学等领域的学生；并在社会科学和科学研究会议上发表演讲。

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.