Regenerative medicine holds the promise of revolutionizing treatment for chronic diseases, injury, and age-related degeneration. Within DRIVE-RM we aim to unravel patient-specific processes of regeneration and to steer the regeneration of damaged tissues and organs, using intelligent and life-like biomaterials. To reach our ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes and reducing the burden on healthcare systems, ethical considerations must be integrated into every stage of the project. With great promise comes also great ethical and societal responsibility.
One key lesson from the history of biomedical innovation is that ethical analysis after technologies are fully developed and deployed, are frequently too late to prevent harm, lead to missed opportunities to meet societal needs and/or result in public backlash. Therefore, in DRIVE-RM, we will address ethical questions about responsibility, equity, inclusion, embodiment, needs and values of end-users needs before clinical applications are translated to the clinic. In the development, design and translation of biotechnology, ethically relevant decisions are made that influence the risks and potential these technologies carry. Think for example about, the material and methods chosen, the intended and studied patient populations, and the wording we use to describe the interventions. For example, what do we mean with life-like materials, what do prospective patients’ think about these types of materials and what kind of ethical implications follow from using these words?
To ensure these questions are not only acknowledged but actively integrated into DRIVE-RM, we will follow the ethics parallel research approach, to realize technologies that align with ethical standards and societal need. Specifically, this means that a dedicated ethics researcher is embedded within the DRIVE-RM research team from the start, fostering real-time dialogue and mutual understanding about the scientific developments and their ethical relevance. This embeddedness also involves engagement with a broader range of stakeholders and their perspectives. We will actively create structured dialogues with patients, regulators, and the wider public to create awareness and to anticipate societal needs. Their insights are essential for understanding how RM applications may be used in practice and what effects they may have. Furthermore, Young Talents of DRIVE-RM are trained via workshops to foster a culture of ethical reflection from the start of their careers and to build cross-disciplinary skills in identifying and addressing societal implications. This way, ethics parallel research ensures ethical reflection to evolve in step with technical progress, shaping responsible research directions, identifying social concerns early on, and building public trust. As such engaging with ethics early on is not a distraction from innovation, it is a foundation for it.
