Table Of ContentC R A F T I N
B I O M E D I C A L
R E S E A R C H
The iPS Cell Technology and
the Future of Stem Cell Science
M I A N N A M E S K U S
Craft in Biomedical Research
Mianna Meskus
Craft in Biomedical
Research
The iPS Cell Technology and the Future
of Stem Cell Science
Mianna Meskus
University of Tampere
Tampere, Finland
ISBN 978-1-137-47552-7 ISBN 978-1-137-46910-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46910-6
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A
cknowledgments
This ethnographic study began as a postdoctoral project in 2011 funded
by the Academy of Finland. It continued during my acting as university
lecturer in science and technology studies, in the discipline of sociology at
the University of Helsinki. Getting the project concluded and the book
written was much facilitated by my post as academy research fellow from
2015 onwards. I am deeply grateful for these opportunities of both indulg-
ing in full-time research and scraping it together on the side of teaching;
it has been educating. In finalizing the book, I am about to start as associ-
ate professor in the University of Tampere in the New Social Research
program. Knowledge of the new job has been a perfect incitement to put
an end to a dear project.
Over the years, I have had the privilege of developing, testing, discard-
ing, and reorienting parts of the study in wonderful research environ-
ments. My postdoctoral visit to the foregone BIOS Centre at the London
School of Economics and Political Science in 2011 kicked the project off.
My warm thanks go to Nikolas Rose and all the BIOS staff during that
spring. Special thanks go to Cathy Herbrand, Angela Filipe, Audrey
L’Espérance, Des Fitzgerald, and Michal Nahman for great conversations
and laughs. Always supportive, I thank Nikolas for welcoming me to two
further research visits to London at the King’s College Department of
Global Health and Social Medicine. In addition to collegial inspiration,
these visits were crucial in gathering material for this study. On the latter
visit I gave a presentation at King’s and had the privilege of meeting Charis
Thompson at the seminar. Her encouraging comments and advice (“you
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
must do your own theory”) have stayed with me since. On that note I also
thank two symposiums and their organizers in specific for inviting me to
present my early findings of the study, because these events helped to de-
attach my conceptual thinking from my own intellectual conventions and
venture towards where the fieldwork was taking me. “The Government of
Life” symposium organized in Copenhagen in 2013 is one of them. Thank
you Ayo Wahlberg and Klaus Hoeyer, companions in deliberating what to
do with Foucault! The other is “Materialities and Materialisms in
Contemporary Thought: Ontology, Politics, Technology” held in
Helsinki, 2013. Sara Heinämaa, together with the cavalcade of (mostly)
continental philosophers as other speakers, did a good job in making me
see where the potentialities of this study lie.
Midway through the project I joined the EU COST Action Bio-objects
and their boundaries: Governing matters at the intersection of society, poli-
tics, and science, directed by Andrew Webster. As all of those who were in
the Bio-objects crew as long as it lasted know, this was a perfect mix of
cross-national research intra-action and merry get-togethers across
Europe. My warmest thanks go to Andrew, along with Ingrid Metzler,
Aaro Tupasela, Iñigo de Miguel Beriain, Simone Bateman, Luca Marelli,
Giuseppe Testa, and the rest of the group! I am indebted to the network
and Giuseppe for a visit to the European Institute of Oncology, Milan, as
well as to Luca and Giuseppe D’Agostino for our joint work on the moral
economy of stem cell research. Towards the very end of the study I have
been again lucky to receive great comments at a critical time, on the final
versions of some chapters in the book from scholars in Erlangen. Warm
thanks to Annerose Böhrer and Larissa Pfaller from the Friedrich-
Alexander- Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg for inviting me to teach and
give a paper at the Department of Sociology at FAU. The students and
staff were generous and thoughtful in their feedback, thank you all.
Another hub of bright scholars I bow towards is the Reproductive
Sociology Research Group at the University of Cambridge led by Sarah
Franklin. My sincerest thanks to Sarah and Karen Jent, Noémie Merleau-
Ponty and the rest of the wonderful ReproSoc in facilitating a memorable
research visit and helping me push the book into production!
It is not the case that I would have been lacking intellectual support
back home. Quite the contrary, firstly the famous Totemi (aka Knowledge,
Technology, and Environment) doctoral seminar at the University of
Helsinki must be thanked from the bottom of my heart for all the inspira-
tion it has given over the past years. My special thanks go to Jose Cañada,
ACKNOWLEDGMENT S vii
Elina Helosvuori, Kamilla Karhunmaa, Tomi Lehtimäki, Vera Raivola,
Sampsa Saikkonen, Jaakko Taipale, Heta Tarkkala, and Petri Ylikoski—not
only for the wine and spirit but also for insightful comments on my manu-
script! Thanks also to all students of the Technoscience & Society 2016
course who read and commented one of the chapters. I embrace my
research group members Elina Helosvuori, Kaisa Kivipuro, Lotta
Hautamäki and Riikka Homanen for being there, and helping me out in
so many ways. Other dear colleagues who never denied their support in
my need of constructive criticism include Venla Oikkonen, Karoliina Snell,
Ilpo Helén, and Kai Alhanen. For comments along the way, I am also
indebted to Lotta Haikkola, Kaisa Kuurne, Anna Leppo, Eeva Luhtakallio,
Mikko Jauho, Elina Paju, and Mikko Virtanen. Finally, there is a special
place that I must acknowledge here, namely, the Tvärminne Zoological
Station, which is a small marine station located at the entrance to the Gulf
of Finland. Without the writing retreats I made to this station away from
everything yet buzzing with biologists with fantastic study topics such as
the state of the Baltic sea bottom and the reproductive patterns of glow-
worms, I doubt the book would still be “about to be finished”.
To all the researcher and regulator participants of this study, whose
names and affiliations I have promised not to disclose, I humbly thank you
for sharing your time, thoughts, expertise, and experiences over these
years. I am grateful for all heads of laboratory for allowing me to visit your
laboratories in Finland, Sweden, UK, and Italy. I thank all hardworking
PhD students, postdocs, and lab technicians for showing me the way and
sharing your thoughts. To all the heart disease patients and control per-
sons I was privileged to interview in Finland: Sydämelliset kiitokset kaikille
potilas—ja kontrollihaastateltavilleni! Ilman teidän uteliasta viisauttanne ja
aikaanne tämä kirja olisi jäänyt tyystin vaillinaiseksi. Sain haastatteluista
paljon, toivottavasti tekin myös jotakin. Without tissue donors’ accounts,
this book would have missed one of its three pillars. All the faults and
(mis)interpretations are of course entirely mine.
Finally, I would like to thank Sampsamatti Tanner and our children
Viola and Eljas Tanner for eagerly taking part in some of the adventures
this study has required, but also for enduring the periods I have been
away—and for never blaming me for what I (also) am—oftentimes an
infuriatingly absentminded researcher. This book is dedicated to my par-
ents Helena and Eero Meskus, both very skilled at making the head, the
hand, and the heart meet, which is what craftwork is essentially about.
c
ontents
1 I ntroduction 1
Part I Clinical Translation 43
2 Human Cells to the Market 45
3 Between Craft and Standardized Production 79
Part II Experimentation 105
4 Making iPS Cells in the Laboratory 107
5 Instrumentality and Care in Experimental Research 147
Part III Tissue Donation 179
6 Patients and the Material Origins of Knowledge 181
7 Scientific Craftwork in the Age of Bioindustrialization 217
Index 233
ix
A
bbreviAtions
ANT Actor-Network Theory
ATMPs Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products
CAT Committee for Advanced Therapies
EMA European Medicines Agency
EU European Union
hES Cell Human Embryonic Stem Cell
IMI Innovative Medicines Initiative
iPS Cell Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell
ISSCR International Society for Stem Cell Research
IVF In Vitro Fertilization
PCR Polymerase Chain Reaction
STS Science and Technology Studies
xi
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 3.1 Cryotanks used by the EBiSC project to store the banked iPS
cell lines. (© Fraunhofer IBMT, Photo: Bernd Müller) 90
Fig. 3.2 Automated cryobanking system to ensure the security and
consistency of the EBiSC cell lines at the Fraunhofer Institute
for Biomedical Engineering (IBMT) in Sulzbach, Germany.
(© Fraunhofer IBMT, Photo: Bernd Müller) 90
Fig. 4.1 Derivation of iPS cells from adult cells. (Reproduced with
permission from the International Society of Stem Cell
Research (ISSCR) from their informational document, “Stem
Cell Facts”, accessible at http://www.closerlookatstemcells.
org/patient-resources/ [accessed 22 June 2017]) 116
Fig. 4.2 The method of reprogramming human somatic cells into iPS
cells. (Photo credit: Dr. Christian Unger, Centre for Stem Cell
Biology, University of Sheffield) 124
Fig. 6.1 Immunostained iPS cell colony indicating pluripotency through
OCT4 upregulation. (Photo credit: Dr. Milla Mikkola,
University of Helsinki) 203
Fig. 7.1 Main elements of scientific craftwork in biomedical research.
(Figure by the author) 228
xiii
