The OECD and the ESRC Genomics Policy & Research Forum jointly organised a one-day Forum on 12 November 2012 in Paris. The event was both retrospective and forward-looking. The Forum concluded that the promise of biotechnology is not set but evolves with fresh scientific knowledge, novel laws and regulations and that the future of biotechnology needs to also integrate social and cultural dimensions. Presentations can now be downloaded. Podcasts and summary of the Forum will be available soon.
See also www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/forum
Agenda and Presentations
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OECD Headquarters in Paris - 12 November 2012 |
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Opening and welcome remarks
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Keynote Address: The 21st Century - The Age of Biology
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Plenary One Retrospective: The Role of Expectations in Biotech Developments This session will seek to understand the economic and social expectations of biotech over the last 30 years and review how these expectations have shaped the policy and research agenda. Speakers will reflect on the extent to which expectations have been met, surpassed or confounded. The session will conclude by considering the futures for biotechnology and examine any conflicting expectations.
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Plenary Two Health and Biomedicine in an Age of Convergence This session will focus on two main sorts of anticipated developments in health and medicine. There is first the healthcare-related promise of innovative technologies such as synthetic biology, which envisage – for example – programmable biological materials and novel means for drug delivery within the body. Second, there are expectations that genomics will converge with bioinformatics to offer increasingly applicable understandings to promote public health.
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Plenary Three Biotechnology of the Future: Industrial Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology Late 20th-century entrepreneurial visions of a biotechnological future typically placed a lot of emphasis on bioplastics and bio-based chemicals, but this vision was at odds with mainstream developments in biotechnology, at least in the “global north”. Brazil, with its Pró-Álcool scheme, exemplifies a different story. Speakers in this session will identify changing present-day expectations for industrial biotech and consider these expectations in a global framework.
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Plenary Four Marine Biotechnology: Legal, Scientific and IP Issues The value of marine resources and the special status of the World’s oceans as a form of “commons” have long been recognised, but it is only recently that the biotechnological and genomic potential of the oceans has been appreciated. This session will build on recent OECD work in marine-biotech, looking in an integrated way at the legal-regulatory, scientific and commercial aspects of the various forms of bio-value in the marine environment.
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Plenary Five Emerging Pathogens in the Environment As the socio-economic importance of the bio-sector grows, so will the emergence and significance of pathogens. This session will focus on new plant, animal and human pathogens, including hybridisation between native and exotic pathogens; on emerging understandings of pathogen interaction in agricultural and forestry habitats; on the links between disease and environmental change; and on the design of regulatory measures and those measures’ interactions with trade. Chair: David INGRAM, University of Edinburgh and Lancaster University, United Kingdom
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Closing Debate Chair: Steve YEARLEY, ESRC Genomics Forum, United Kingdom Panellists
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