(229d) Opening Stem Cell Research and Development: A Policy Proposal for the Management of Data, Intellectual Property, and Ethics

The need to strike a better balance between free sharing and proprietary and regulatory restraint in the life sciences is becoming an important policy concern in the fields of health policy, law, and bioethics. Here we explore these issues in the field of stem cell research. Expanded funding for stem cell research and development holds unique promise for advancing medicine and human welfare. However, technical, proprietary, and regulatory conditions are not ideal: closed information, congested intellectual property, and regulatory complexity are likely to slow innovation, skew attention towards large markets, and prevent ethical settlement. Accordingly, we propose a new form of collective action among funding agencies, scientific journals, and research institutions to centralize data, cell lines, and technologies and to design and disseminate research tools. The goal is more efficient technology exchange within the research community, orientation of product development towards pressing public health needs, and promotion of ?best ethics' in research and development.