A new agenda for understanding industrialised tissue-based products

Tissue-based products (TBPs) for biomedicine and consumer goods have been made on smaller scales because of the complexity of using living cells. Increasingly, cells are scaled-up for mass production. Other approaches scale-down to person-specific products. Both modify cells’ nature and entail advanced manufacturing techniques. These scale shifts involve novel infrastructures, business models and new ways of thinking about human and animal tissue. Profound ethical and social implications exist for research and development, medical and food practices and more. 

This project gathers a network of experts analysing social and political aspects by exploring forms these new technical and regulatory infrastructures take and how industrialised scale-up and scale-down shapes differing ways of understanding tissue. It will also explore how models for producing and selling TBPs shape their development.

We will synthesise findings and develop action items that benefit the public, scientists, social scientists and cell manufacturers.