STS Social Studies of Science: Compound Solutions

制药公司，非营利机构和学术界的创新网络专注于化学化合物治疗广泛疾病，构成了一个动态的网站，用于研究新技术，全球监管机制和社会需求的交叉点。直到最近，制药公司很少关注开发新技术来治疗主要影响穷人的疾病，因为为治疗这些疾病而开发的药物或疫苗的利润太低，无法抵消研究和制造成本。然而，随着诺华、礼来、大冢制药和约翰逊约翰逊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，并投入新的设施开发治疗被忽视疾病的化合物，药物生产合作伙伴关系（PDP）正在形成。该项目重点关注围绕结核病和疟疾治疗形成的伙伴关系的三个问题：1）制药公司，科学家和非营利组织的创新网络是否会成功改变药物研究和生产的现状; 2）塑造合作关系和实践的主要动力; 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。该方法是对四个地点的多地点民族志：1）对科学家、结核病和疟疾药物和疫苗研究的制药部门负责人、无国界医生组织官员、参与合作的学术研究人员以及结核病和疟疾药物和疫苗研究的非营利机构进行采访; 2）世界疫苗、疟疾和结核病研究以及药物发现伙伴关系会议; 3）参观结核病和疟疾新药临床试验点; 4）对原始文献进行环境扫描。该项目的更广泛影响包括对网络、合作关系以及全球创新和科学方面的社会科学文献的贡献。该研究还将涉及与科学家，实验室技术人员，基层组织和工作人员的不同社区合作，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，以及社会多个部门积极参与以技术为基础的项目。除了写一本书，化合物解决方案，将总结项目结果，研究人员将提供研究方法和出版机会的研究生经验;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;并出席社会科学和科学研究会议。

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.