Standardizing the Unknown: Practicable Pluripotency as Doable Futures

Abstract

To standardize human embryonic stem cells is an exercise in standardizing different kinds of unknowns. Such standards, currently being developed in the field, can change the understanding of what a stem cell is. In the influential International Stem Cell Initiative (ISCI), scientists in a fiercely competitive field are prepared to exchange research material and data that would normally be highly confidential. ISCI participants understand the particular unknown that they are seeking to standardize as a ‘known unknown’ and hope that their collaborative work will serve to move the field forward and thus enable both competition and comparable data. Such known unknowns are seen to be of vital importance, yet of a different epistemic currency than the types of unknowns that could lead to scientific fame and fortune. Furthermore, while the notion of ‘pluripotency’ is of pivotal importance as a discursive resource when demarcating the abilities of embryonic stem cells from those of adult stem cells, it can also present a practical problem. A more flexible definition allowing for different stem cell ‘niches’ could render the cell lines less pluri but more potent. The reconfiguration of pluripotency may serve to transport human embryonic stem cells into a clinical and ‘doable’ future.

Notes

1. Quality Assured Science: the Role of Standards in Stem Cell Research, ESRC RES-340-25-0004.

2. The GMP type of standards relate to issues of establishing safety, stability and robustness over time. It is important to find ways of ensuring that the lines are not contaminated, and that they remain stable and do not change over time. Agreements and arrangements for the care and maintenance of stem cells will have to be made, and these standards will then themselves have to be cared for and nurtured, much like the cells (O'Connell, 1993).

3. Quality assured science can also in part be viewed as a response to a public demand for regulatory action, stemming from a series of controversial cases where a scientific community has been seen to single-mindedly pursue scientific agendas with little regard for public safety, notably the BSE and GM food controversies (Millstone & van Zwanenberg, 2002).

4. The Centre itself is collaborating directly with the ESRC project.

5. See The National Institutes of Health resource for stem cell research. In Stem Cell Information [World Wide Web site] (Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, US Department of Health and Human Services). Available at: http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/media/defaultpage (accessed 14 December 2006).

6. The pace, however, must not be so quick that it risks a failure to take into account the potential unknown unknowns. These unknown unknowns are sometimes brought up by scientists themselves, but more often by critics concerned by what they see as an unreflected strive to advance practice without having a proper knowledge base to situate such practice in.

7. Density here refers to how closely together the cells are growing on a plate; ‘to select at low density’ is to divide and move cells to new vessels before they get crowded.

8. In this particular interview the cell surface marker SSEA 1 and its respective significance when expressed by ES cells and mouse EC cells respectively is discussed.