Team:CU-Boulder/Human Practices
Human Practices
We designed our project around the side affects of a cancer therapy and the possibility of an overactive immune system.
For example, CAR-T cell therapy involves taking a cancer patients immune cells and engineering them to specifically go after tumors. This therapy has shown great results but not without some side effects. If something goes wrong with the antibodies then there is no way to deactivate them quickly. Due to this problem our team decided to create a quick on/off switch to these engineered antibodies. Our team hopes that our project could make useful therapies like CAR-T cells safer to use by reducing side effects.
In order to educate the public about this new therapy and about our idea we presented our findings to a biological club for high school kids. These kids were getting their first taste of lab work and were in the process of gel electrophoresis when we walked in.
Our project was a great example of using gel electrophoresis in the lab. Many of the student were curious and asked questions about our project and overall lab work. Because they were high school students many of them were not familiar with our topic of dealing with the immune system. We hope that our presentation inspired them to pursue and be interested in research.