The Organact project (Organact), coordinated by Fabien Milanovic, is funded by the ANR until October 2026 and has as its main partners Baptiste Moutaud (anthropologist, CR CNRS) and Aurélie Mahalatchimy (lawyer, CR CNRS). Two theses are being funded within this framework (one in law, one in sociology-anthropology), as are the activities of a research assistant and potentially a Master's internship.
The primary objective of our project is to explore biomedical practices (care and research) that rely on organoids: the diversity of organoids and their implications (depending on the types of organoids and the nature of the original cells), the places where they are used (laboratory, research program, hospital, platform), the actors involved (public and private), and the activities in which they are deployed and their purposes. Our second objective is to understand the impact of organoids on biomedical practices, how (and, if applicable, toward what) they are changing them. What is the nature of these organoids? How are they classified? What do they make possible and what difficulties do their production and use in biomedical research pose? What regulations do they fall under? To document these objectives and test our hypotheses, an interdisciplinary field study is underway, coupled with a traditional legal analysis based on the study of applicable law. The field investigation is conducted using an ethnographic approach combining situated observations, semi-structured interviews, and the collection of written documents.
Four main areas of ethnographic research were chosen at the outset of the project, with an emphasis on the questions and methods specific to each. All address various aspects of the project's cross-cutting issues and research areas.
Funding: ORGANACT “Organoids in action: An interdisciplinary approach in social sciences” (Acronym Organact, ANR AAPG2022 project, €457k funding over 42 months, started on April 1, 2023)