Difference between revisions of "Team:New York City/Human Practices"

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             <div class="navbar-brand"><a href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:New_York_City">HD Resolution</a></div>
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             <div class="navbar-brand"><a href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:New_York_City">New York City iGEM</a></div>
 
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                             <a class="dropdown-item" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:New_York_City/HD">What is HD?</a>
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                             <a class="dropdown-item" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:New_York_City/HD">What is Huntington's?</a>
 
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                             <a class="dropdown-item" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:New_York_City/Description">Description</a>
 
                             <a class="dropdown-item" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:New_York_City/Design">Design</a>
 
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     <h2 align="center">Human Practices</h2>
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     <h2 align="center">Integrated Practices</h2>
 
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     <p class="lead">Huntington's disease (HD) is a rare and deadly inherited disease, so our team was motivated to develop a cure that would attack the root of the problem instead of solely relieving the symptoms. The severity of the symptoms, along with the late onset of the disease, affects victims both mentally and physically. Thus, we wanted to spread awareness of HD and our research to both the public and scientific community. We held information sessions within our respective high schools to educate students on HD as well as our ongoing research. We also visited organizations like the HDSA (Huntington's Disease Society of America) to present our project and discuss other ongoing research on HD such as Zinc Fingers. Most importantly, we had a rare opportunity to attend an Education Day event at HDSA Center of Excellence at Columbia University Medical Center and NYS Psychiatric Institute where we met Huntington's disease patients, their caregivers and advocates. Through direct outreach to institutions and educational communities such as our schools, the colleges/universities in our city, and affiliated organizations, we hoped to inspire further experimentation and interest in HD.</p>
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     <p class="lead">Our team originally focused on developing a modified RNA protein replacement technology for Huntington’s under the guise that the Huntington’s phenotype was caused by the loss of function of the Huntingtin protein due to polyglutame repeats. During our continued research thought the project, we discovered that there are 2 copies of HTT and simply up regulating the good copy as long as disease state HTT protein is present. Thus we decided it may be better to change the focus of our project from validating toe-hold displacement to expression of human endogenous HTT mRNA so that others could use it do develop RNAi style therapies. However, after we collaborated with the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, we discovered that the current research in treatment both targeted the endogenous and normal RNA strands, essentially stopping the production of all Huntington protein. Thus, our team is once again focused on validating toehold exchange to affect HTT to replace the mRNA targeted by RNAi with a corrected synthetic mRNA.</p>
 
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Revision as of 23:36, 3 September 2018

Integrated Practices

Our team originally focused on developing a modified RNA protein replacement technology for Huntington’s under the guise that the Huntington’s phenotype was caused by the loss of function of the Huntingtin protein due to polyglutame repeats. During our continued research thought the project, we discovered that there are 2 copies of HTT and simply up regulating the good copy as long as disease state HTT protein is present. Thus we decided it may be better to change the focus of our project from validating toe-hold displacement to expression of human endogenous HTT mRNA so that others could use it do develop RNAi style therapies. However, after we collaborated with the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, we discovered that the current research in treatment both targeted the endogenous and normal RNA strands, essentially stopping the production of all Huntington protein. Thus, our team is once again focused on validating toehold exchange to affect HTT to replace the mRNA targeted by RNAi with a corrected synthetic mRNA.