Knowledge graphs of ethical concerns of cerebral organoids

Abstract

Objectives: The rapid development of cerebral organoid technology and the gradual maturity of cerebral organoids highlight the necessity of foresighted research on relevant ethical concerns. We employed knowledge graphs and conducted statistical analysis with CiteSpace for a comprehensive analysis of the status quo of the research on the ethical concerns of cerebral organoids from a bibliometric perspective.

Materials and methods: We performed a statistical analysis of published papers on cerebral organoid ethics, keyword co-occurrence graph, literature co-citation and knowledge clustering graph to examine the status of the ethics research, internal relationship between technological development and ethical research, and ethical concerns of the academia. Finally, we used a keyword time zone graph and related statistics to analyze and predict the trends and popular topics of future cerebral organoids ethics research.

Results: We demonstrated that although the ethical concerns of cerebral organoids have long been discussed, it was not until 2017 that the ethical issues began to receive more attention, when cerebral organoids were gradually mimicking the human brain more closely and increasingly being combined with chimera research. The recent key ethical concerns are primarily divided into three categories: concerns that are common in life sciences, specific to cerebral organoids, and present in cross-fields. These increasing ethical concerns are inherently related to the continual development of technology. The analysis pointed out that future research should focus on the ethical concerns of consciousness that are unique to cerebral organoids, ethical concerns of cross-fields, and construction and improvement of legislative and regulatory systems.

Conclusions: Although research on cerebral organoids can benefit the biomedicine field, the relevant ethical concerns are significant and have received increasing attention, which are inherently related to the continual development of technology. Future studies in ethics regarding cerebral organoid research should focus on the ethical concerns of consciousness, and cross-fields, as well as the improvement of regulatory systems.