Responsible Innovation in Stem Cell Research: Using Responsibility as a Strategy

Abstract

Responsible innovation has been introduced as an important condition for advancing the field of regenerative medicine. This is reflected in the frequent references to responsible research conduct and responsible innovation in guidelines and recommendations in academic literature. The meaning of responsibility, how responsibility could be fostered and the context in which responsibilities should be enacted, however, remain unclear. The goal of this paper is to clarify the concept of responsibility in stem cell research and to illustrate how this concept could inform strategies to deal effectively with the ethical implications of stem cell research. Responsibility can be dissected into four categories: responsibility-as-accountability, responsibility-as-liability, responsibility-as-an-obligation and responsibility-as-a-virtue. The authors focus on responsible research conduct and responsible innovation in general to move beyond the scope of research integrity and illustrate that different notions of responsibility have different implications for how stem cell research is organized.

Plain language summary

Literature and guidelines mention that responsible innovation could help the field of stem cell research to deal with ethical challenges. However, in this literature and guidelines it does not become clear how ‘responsibility’ should be understood, how responsibilities are recognized, how responsibilities are shared and how someone could take responsibility. In this article, different types of responsibility are discussed: responsibility-as-accountability, responsibility-as-liability, responsibility-as-an-obligation and responsibility-as-a-virtue. The types are discussed according to how they are different from one another and how they can be used to organize stem cell research. It is shown that these different types of responsibility help not only with research integrity issues but also with societal and other types of ethical challenges.

Tweetable abstract

Responsible innovation could advance the field of stem cell research. By considering different notions of responsibility, possibilities emerge to frame ethical challenges and organize stem cell research accordingly. #ResponsibleInnovation #StemCells #Bioethics

Keywords::

• bioethics
• ethics
• responsibility
• responsible innovation
• RRI
• stem cells

Author contributions

LS Assen, KR Jongsma and AL Bredenoord prepared the initial draft. MA Tryfonidou, R Isasi and L Utomo made contributions to early versions of the manuscript.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program iPSpine under grant agreement no. 825925. MA Tryfonidou receives funding from the Dutch Arthritis Society (LLP22) and is a scientific advisor of SentryX. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program iPSpine under grant agreement no. 825925. MA Tryfonidou receives funding from the Dutch Arthritis Society (LLP22) and is a scientific advisor of SentryX. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.