Pôle des Biotechnologies en Société (PBS)

Exploring biotechnologies in context: social, ethical, and regulatory perspectives.

The PBS is a research team focused on the Human and Social Sciences perspective on biotechnologies. It aims to empirically study biotechnologies that produce new forms of life, generating entities that redefine the interactions between humans and non-humans, biotic and abiotic entities.

The PBS lab is involved in a multidisciplinary exploration (sociological, anthropological, philosophical...) of life science technologies by looking at them in the contexts where they are developed and used. First, biotechnologies are studied in light of the current societal challenges related to health and the environment. Second, the innovation practices related to these biotechnologies, and the methods of regulating them are empirically investigated. Two topics are then examined more closely : biotechnologies as related to biomedicine (as example: organoids) and biotechnologies as related to the environment (like biocontrol). As part of an interdisciplinary collaboration between the social and life sciences, PBS research also supports social science teaching programs in the school's training courses.

Theoretical Perspective

The PBS adopts a theoretical approach focused on these techniques, examining how they establish control over living processes (reproduction, growth, regeneration, senescence), thereby redefining the agency of living entities. This leads to diverse modalities of existence—affecting their socialization and ontologies—which the PBS seeks to explore and make intelligible. The entities populating our society do not form a closed list; they are dynamic, and new entities may become part of the collective, raising questions about their status. Research Themes

Axis 1: Biotechnologies in Biomedical Fields

The deployment of biotechnologies in biomedicine includes personalized medicine (adapting therapies to genetic profiles, diagnostic-prognostic tests, pharmacogenomics), regenerative medicine (stem cells, biomaterials, exoskeletons, cyborgs), gene therapy (somatic and germline), and transplantation (xenografts).

Ethical and regulatory issues, including the banking of life forms, augmentation of sensory and cognitive capacities through gene therapy, genome editing techniques, and the transformation of the genome. Additionally, there are economic and political implications such as bio-engineering, intellectual property rights, and issues of privacy and public health.

Organact: An interdisciplinary project funded by ANR (2023-2026) led by Fabien Milanovic, exploring human organoids and their implications in biomedical practices. It combines sociology, anthropology, and law to study the diversity and implications of organoids in their production, circulation, and usage.

Axis 2: Biotechnologies in Environmental Fields

Addressing ecological challenges related to climate change, biodiversity erosion, and the rise of new genome editing techniques in plants. The PBS focuses on biopolitics extended to non-humans, involving studies on new GMOs, gene driving, biocontrol techniques like viruses, and phagotherapy.

PHAG-2S: A multi-partnered research project funded by CASDAR (FranceAgrimer, 2022-2025), focusing on phagotherapy as a new strategy against plant bacterial diseases. This project combines biological and sociological perspectives to understand the socio-political dimensions of this innovation in agricultural biopolitics.

This interdisciplinary research program seeks to empirically study the biotechnological production of new forms of life, exploring the complex relationships between these entities and their impact on society.