Psychiatric Genomics in good mental health

Blog post by Kristrun Gunnarsdottir, Cesagen: (on Session 4A - Personalised Medicine: Debating the Promise of Psychiatric Genomics)

The chair, Adam Hedgecoe of Ceasgen opened with an apology for the absence of Nick Craddock, Cardiff Medical School - another victim of the wintry weather.

What can we make of personalised psychiatric genetics in 2010?

• Mike Arribas-Ayllon, Ceasagen talked about managing promise and complexity: gene networks, unpredictable environmental factors, hard-to-classify patients and psychiatrists who are already very cautious about promising a cure.
• Maria Arranz, Institute of Psychiatry, London argued that great achievements are reached if genomics can help, even if only minimally, predicting reaction to psychiatric medication. Managing doses and types of medication has always been notoriously difficult.
• Barbara Prainsack, Austrian Bioethics Commission, argued that direct-to-consumer testing does not lead to more genetic determinism. Consumers/patients/individuals are more sophisticated than that. 

‘Converging Technologies’ a Contested Concept

Blog post by Shawn H.E. Harmon, Innogen (on Session 3A - Converging Technologies: Promises, Programmes, and Practices)

As pointed out by Prof. Robin Williams, Innogen, co-convenor of this panel, the idea of ‘technology convergence’, an idea explored in a variety of ways and sessions at this conference, has a number of meanings and uses.  This session was not so much about how technologies are converging or how science regulation should or can respond to this phenomenon, but rather what we mean by ‘convergence’ and the baggage that the term carries.

Is social technology new way to plug healthcare and food availability gaps for poor people?

Blog post  by Dinar Kale, Innogen OU (on Session 2A - The Role of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in New Agriculture and Health Technologies)

Food and health needs of low- and middle-income countries remains grossly under resourced in many areas. The 10/90 gap (Only 10% of global health research investment is directed towards 90% of global disease burden) is used to describe this global health challenge. A session on Private Public Partnerships (PPPs) at the recently held EGN conference highlighted role of PPPs in the development of new healthcare and agri-biotech technologies. The session showed that PPP as innovating organizational arrangement provides effective ways of mitigating issues associated with traditional private or public supported models of development. Session pointed out some key success factors. However it was quite evident from interactions after the session that the ‘PPP’ model does suffer from severe limitations.

Making Out the Promise of Synthetic Biology

Blog post by Heather Lowrie, Innogen (on Session 1B - Making Out the Promise of Synthetic Biology)

Visions of a biodigital future include the ability to engineer biology, synthesise novel living things and get biological products to do new jobs for us in smarter ways. Dr. Emma Frow from the Genomics Forum chaired a lively session asking: how plausible is this, and what concerns would accompany moves to take such products to market?

An anthropologist, and ethicist and a sociologist go into a bar…

Blog post by Claire Packman, Egenis (on Session 1A - How Does Life-Sciences Knowledge Circulate?)

No, they go into a panel at the EGN/OECD conference to explore, as chair Professor Steve Hughes put it, “three distinct framings of the question of knowledge production and circulation.” It’s an experiment,” he admitted happily. “We don’t know where this session will take us.”

Conference off to a cracking start..

Blog post by Dr. Steve Sturdy, Genomics Forum (on Plenary 1 - Knowledge Networks and Markets and Plenary 2 - Biodigital Futures: Informatisation and Convergence in the Life Sciences)

The conference got off to a cracking start this morning, with two plenary sessions opening up the key themes that will run through our discussions: first on Knowledge Networks and Markets (abbreviated by the speakers to KNMs), then on Informatisation and Convergence in the Life Sciences.

Snowy weather adds an extra challenge to conference preparations

The weather this Sunday morning in Paris is bright, clear and a rather warm + 3 degrees Celsius.

We would like to wish all delegates and participants travelling to our ESRC Genomics Network annual conference a safe journey. Some light snow is forecast but we have hot coffee and warm croissants to welcome you at registration on Monday.