Team:SMMU-China/Human Practices
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Silver up
Human practice is all about a line. One side to the patients, another side to the doctors, although we are still medico. All we want to do is to care, to save. We talked to patients and experienced clinical doctors to understand status; we consulted the masters to correct our research direction. Communication with other iGEMers enriched our knowledge and exchanged our ideas. The promotion of synthetic biology and HF prevention can be filled with fun when we use the popular public media. Health lies on the efforts of the children. The summer camp is an excellent chance to encourage them to focus on the technique, focus on synthetic biology, which may help to improve the life quality. No medicine is better than prevention. Healthy life style is the most important thing for the elderly. Thus, the visit to Yanji geracomium contributes our love for the predisposed old men.
Internship
As a medico, clinical internship is essential in our career. When we started our internship for the first year, we found the truth was much crueler than we imagined. We thought that as long as we followed the treatment and medication according to the textbook, we can greatly relieve patients’ suffering, and, to some points, we may even cure their diseases. However, on the contrary, during the internship in cardiology department, there were too many patients cannot get cured for heart disease because there is no medicine can stop the process of heart failure, let alone reverse it. Currently, we can do nothing but watch the patients’ condition get deteriorating, and eventually evolve into heart failure. This not only poses a great threat to the physical and mental health of patients; on the other hand, patients' families also suffer tremendous economic pressure, bearing the annual medical burden. Seeing these sad facts, we can't stop wondering if we can find a treatment to HF by using the knowledge we learned about synthetic biology.
Question and interview
To evaluate the feasibility of our project, we consulted professor Erwin Neher, a Nobel laureate major in cell ion channel. We also consulted chief Zhao Xianxian and some other clinical researchers for suggestions on the project. These masters pointed out that our project was feasible due to that calcium leakage was one of the most important mechanism accounted for the chronic heart failure. While, on the other hand, they also recommended that we should explore the other mechanisms that may result into HF. In the next step, we can try to work on other mechanisms.
Collaboration
Do as a new iGEM team, our knowledge of iGEM competition was limited, so we need instructions and suggestions about how to build-up and run a team. We met a few obstacles and setbacks and we had been seeking advice mainly from 3 teams: NUDT-China, Fudan-China and TMMU-China. All the three teams are experienced in iGEM and get excellent results. We visited their labs and invited them to our school for further communication.
Three logos
Team logo
The spinning DNA double helix wraps around the name of our team, symbolizing the technology of synthetic biology as the cornerstone of all our future projects. Two gears in the upper right are the finishing touches, representing the important inspiration of engineering biology in our projects. The overall open composition implies the open and innovative thinking of our team.
Project logo
In 2018, our team's project logo consists of Oracle's heart in Chinese, shield, branch and DNA double helix. The overall shape of the figure looks like a shield, also like the "heart" in the oracle bone inscriptions, indicating that the purpose of our project is to protect the heart. The trunk of a branch is made up of double helixes of DNA, symbolizing that the cornerstone of our technology is synthetic biology. The leaves are the symbol of vitality, showing that after the treatment of our medicine, the heart is rejuvenated.
Moral
The core of our project is to antagonize the phosphorylation of s2808 site on the calcium channel RyR2, the key site of heart failure, through the protection of AR-185 antibody, so as to avoid calcium overload and ultimately inhibit the deterioration of heart failure. We think of AR-185 as a warrior who protects the S2808 locus of cardiomyocytes. They're targeted and powerful. The s2808 locus is a home that they need to defend.
Contribute our love
On September 23, we came to the Shanghai Yanji geracomium to give a lecture on heart failure prevention to the old people. On the day of the event, we were still a bit embarrassed, not knowing if our activities would achieve the desired results. Fortunately, the event was very successful. During the lecture, our team members talked on the stage, and the audience was almost full. After the presentation, there are still many elderly people around the presenter to ask questions, while our other members are obliged to perform regular physical examinations for the elderly. After the event, the president of the nursing home thanked us for the wonderful presentations we had brought to the old people. Maybe we spent a short time in the nursing home, but as long as they can understand the importance of heart failure prevention and action in the days to come, our actions are meaningful.
Clinical research
We designed a questionnaire to investigate the basic information and severity of disease. The patients were admitted in our investigation according to the inclusion criteria:
(1) Diagnosed as heart failure in accordance with criteria from the Chinese Medical Association Cardiovascular Society's "Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Chronic Heart Failure";
(2) Over 18 years old;
(3) Informed consent and signed informed consent.
The patients were excluded according to exclusive criteria:
(1) Mental illness or cognitive impairment;
(2) Complicated with severe organ dysfunction or malignant tumor.
The content was designed according to the NYHA classes for heart failure. Some patients’ relatives answered the questionnaire due to patients were unable to finish the questionnaire. The research was conducted from March 1st to September 31th in the cardiovascular department of Changhai Hospital. There were totally 76 patients admitted into the test. And we can find that the average cost on the HF treatment is about 47.32 thousand yuan per year. The average hospitalization time is about 18.78 days per year.
Communication
CCIC(Conference of China iGEMer Community)，as one of the best communication platforms for iGEMers in China, has gone through its fifth birthday. SMMU-China, the new team for iGEM, participated in CCIC for the first time. We communicated with iGEMers from other universities and got inspired by their experience.
Media promotion
Mainly, there were 3 media used in the process of our project promotion.
WeChat public platforms, as a popular form of media for all-round communication and interaction of text, pictures and voice among groups, have been widely used in recent years. In order to promote our project, to let more people know about our project and to achieve the promotion of synthetic biology and iGEM project, our team established our own Weichat public platform, the Internet Work Number. Whenever our team has a influential social practice, we will send a WeChat push to record the moment. For example, the summer camp, attending CCIC, you can find the details in our WeChat public platform.
As a new media, Shakes is appealing to the youth for the characteristics of short, fast and trendy. Our team used Shakes to record the details of our experiment, both happy and sad memories. Through this comedy form, we can record the problems we encountered in the operation of the experiment. In this way, we can not only spread the idea of joyful experiment, but also record our team's best memory of youth.
Himalaya FM, as the initiator of audiobooks, has great influence in China. We rely on this platform to introduce synthetic biology to our readers on the basis of the book Synthetic Biology and Applications written by Dr. Markus Schmidt. Through all the new mediums we talk above, we are able to achieve a more diversified level of promotion work, which is an important reason for our use of these. By popularizing synthetic biology in a way popular with the mediums, we can achieve the final goal of human practice: to let more people understand synthetic biology, and really let synthetic biology come into the general public.
Summer camp
Since the formation of the SMMU-China team, our members have been thinking about how to effectively promote synthetic biology and IGEM. In August 1st, outstanding students from 12 provinces/cities and 13 middle schools across the country have participated in the summer camp organized by our school. Learning about this news, the iGEM team members are both excited and a little worried. We were excited about this excellent opportunity to show synthetic biology to everyone. Anyway, we decided to seize this opportunity. After active preparation, we successfully held an exchange meeting between iGEM and synthetic biology on the evening of August 3. The exchange introduced the concept of synthetic biology with the tyrannical Tyrannosaurus Rex in the science fiction film Jurassic World 2, showing the magical charm of synthetic biology. We also introduced detailed information about the iGEM competition, highlighting the creative and applied skills of the high school students who participated in the competition that inspired them to participate in iGEMer's high school student team. After a brief report, we used the form of interactive questions, asked the students questions on the knowledge we mentioned, and presented a set of commemorative postcards with their own school features for the right friends. During the presentation of the poster, the students spoke freely and asked various questions to our team members, showing a strong interest in synthetic biology and iGEM. More than an hour of activity soon ended in a warm atmosphere. All that was hoped was that more young students could become interested in the field of synthetic biology, to explore, to think, to discover, to change.
Gold-integreted up
The human practice parts of our project focuses on the promotion of our project and gets feedback from what we have done. During our internship, we watched too many patients suffered from HF and died for that. Thus, we designed a questionnaire to investigate patients’ current situation. On the other hand, we talked to the doctors to find out the defect in treatment. With these preparations, we asked our PI for some suggestions. Then, we designed a nanobody to stop the process of heart failure on the basis of synthetic biology. At the same time, we consulted a Nobelist and some chiefs in cardiovascular department to improve our design. Communication with other teams helped us to fulfill for the competition. New media, visits to summer camp and geracomium promoted our project. Our human practice came from clinical disease and go back to the susceptible people.
Current status of heart failure treatment
To get better understanding of heart failure, we visited the department of cardiology in Changhai and Changzheng hospital. By means of questionnaire and communication with the patients, we came to know that HF patients had to stay about 20 days per year in hospital to receive treatment. HF not only costs a huge amount of money but also reduced patients’ life quality. When consulting the experienced clinical doctors, the cruel truth was that no radical cure has been found for HF. The current treatments on HF are just the momentary relief for the symptoms, while the deterioration of heart is irreversible. On the other hand, the drugs costs a lot. Nowadays, the most promising way to cure HF is considered to be gene therapy. Thus, our team decided to work on gene therapy to solve this problem.
Determine project content
Based on these, we have consulted with our primary PI, Professor Shi Hu, who is a leading scientist in the field of Antibody Engineering. He introduced a novel nanobody termed AR185 which has been recently developed by his group and showed specifically inhibition of RyR2 phosphorylation in vitro. The nanobody, containing a camel single-domain, is known as the smallest unit that can combine target antigens. Therefore, we hypothesis that targeting RyR2 using anti-phosphorylation agents may improve treatment efficacy. We used the tech of phage display and biopanning from Frances H. Arnold, George P. Smith and Gregory P. Winter, which has just awarded the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 2018. To evaluate its potential use for the treatment of heart failure, an adeno-associated virus (AAV) based intracellular antibody delivery strategy was adopt to achieve cardiac-specific gene therapy. Then we demonstrated therapeutic effect both in cell-based assays and in vivo models. Based on the truth that circulating levels of BNP was normally very low in healthy individuals and BNP level correlated well with ventricular wall stress and severity of HF, we put BNP promotor at the upstream of AR185 gene and used ET-1 to stimulate BNP promotor through a large variety of trans.
Dialogues with masters
To evaluate the feasibility of our project, we consulted professor Erwin Neher, a Nobel laureate, and Dr. Zhao Xianxian and Dr. He Zhiqing. These masters pointed out that calcium leakage was one of the most important mechanism accounted for the chronic heart failure. If our intracellular antibody performed well for the leakage, our design would obtain satisfactory improvements in treatment. While, on the other hand, they also recommended that we should explore the other mechanisms that may result into HF. Only figure out the calcium leakage problem may not be a cure for all the HF patients. To improve our project, we managed to develop our project to apply for more mechanisms after we fulfilled AR185 this year.
Cooperation with other iGEMers
Do as a new iGEM team, our knowledge of iGEM competition was limited, so we searched for some instructions and suggestions about how to carry out our project. When we met obstacles and setbacks and then, we had been seeking advice from 3 teams. NUDT-China, as a team has been attending the competition for 5 times, was invited to ShangHai to introduce the iGEM process, and shared their experience in team building in details with us. At the same time, they gave comments on our project, and put forward a lot of good ideas. For example, in our project, AAV has been used to evaluate the nanobody effectiveness. They warned us that virus should be carefully used in the experiment for consideration of biosafety. Under they help, we communicated with our hq and finally ensured the safety. During the visit to TMMU-China and Fudan-China, they showed us the details on the experiment operation and helped in avoiding unnecessary mistakes. We also attended in the 5th CCIC(Conference of China iGEMer Community)，which is one of the best communication platforms for iGEMers in China. During the conference, we learned from other teams’ experience that we enriched the form of human practice parts and tried more interesting ways to promote our projects.
Promotion with social media
After CCIC, we are inspired by other teams’ experience. And then, we decided to try some new media to promote our projects. WeChat public platforms, as a popular form of media for all-round communication and interaction of text, pictures and voice among groups, have been widely used in recent years. In order to promote our project, to let more people know about our project and to achieve the promotion of synthetic biology and iGEM project, our team established our own Wechat public platform, the Internet Work Number. Whenever our team has a influential social practice, we will send a WeChat push to record the moment. For example, the summer camp, attending CCIC, you can find the details in our WeChat public platform. As a new media, Shakes is appealing to the youth for the characteristics of short, fast and trendy. Our team used Shakes to record the details of our experiment, both happy and sad memories. Through this comedy form, we can record the problems we encountered in the operation of the experiment. In this way, we can not only spread the idea of joyful experiment, but also record our team's best memory of youth. Himalaya FM, as the initiator of audiobooks, has great influence in China. We rely on this platform to introduce synthetic biology to our readers on the basis of the book Synthetic Biology and Applications written by Dr. Markus Schmidt. Through all the new mediums we talk above, we are able to achieve a more diversified level of promotion work, which is an important reason for our use of these. By popularizing synthetic biology in a way popular with the mediums, we can achieve the final goal of human practice: to let more people understand synthetic biology, and really let synthetic biology come into the general public. In return, some audience commended our efforts on these media. We felt encouraged by these comments and all our efforts seemed to be recognized by the public. Although this process is fulfilled with obstacles and setbacks, we even wanted to give up for several times. As long as what we do is helpful for the welfare of human beings, we will devote all we have to this career.
Contribute our love
To memorize our project, we designed our team logo and project logo. Also, we designed a moral for our project. We gave lectures to high students from 12 provinces/cities and 13 middle schools across the country participating in the summer camp. We introduced our projects to these high school students and recommended them to engage in the high school competition. We volunteered to Yanji geracomium to contribute our love for the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival. We gave a voluntary physical examination and gave speech on the prevention of HF. The elderly there were satisfied about our job. We helped to solve their confusion on how to exercise and go on a healthy diet. Through this trip, we recognize that prevention is much more important than treatment. Only stay a healthy lifestyle, can we lower the risk of HF.
