As a “bigger picture” of iGEM, with the highest ideal to apply synthetic biology to benefit the world, the year-long human practice of our team goes along with our project. Through human practice, on one hand, we establish and improve our project, and apply our project to the real world; on the other hand, we bring scientific knowledge to the general public, educate teenagers and inspire students. Through human practice, we understand the relationship between the world and synthetic biology.

Sliver

To establish an element with the function of analog-to-digital converter, our project can be used not only in EGFR targeted cancer monitoring and treatment, but also in other disease treatment, environmental pollution monitoring, and any other occasions which involve monitoring and “ all or nothing” corresponding.

We thought carefully about what we can do to serve the world when we established our project. Based on plenty of research on the hottest issues, Human practice group of our team locked CAR-T, a kind of cancer immunotherapy. We intend to focus on Cytokine storm, a side effect of CAR-T, and build a project which is dedicated to weakening its effect.

Next, we conducted interviews scientifically. We brought our idea and our project to principal investigators in Chinese Academy of Sciences, medical researchers and doctors. Taking their suggestions, we corrected and improved our project, changing the application field of our project from weakening cytokine storm to monitoring EFGR targeted cancer. It makes our project more scientific and practical.

Through human practice, we learned about CAR-T, the latest cancer immunotherapy, and learned in detail about its ins and outs, including its side effects, cytokine storms. We also learned more about EGFR, how it links cancer, and cancer treatments that target it. We also learned about society's perception of cancer and how to conduct investigations scientifically to understand society.

Gold

We integrated our human practice into our project.

First, our project began with human practice. Human practice team brought CAR-T to our team, and we designed our project in order to weaken cytokine storm.

Second, our project was revised by human practice. We have changed the application prospect of our project from weakening cytokine storm to monitoring EFGR targeted cancer, by following recommendations from interviewing principal investigators in Chinese Academy of Sciences. The reason why we changed it is that Synnotch cannot be used in the solution environment. EGFR, a kind of protein on the surface of the cell membrane, can be bound with synthetic extracellular recognition domain of Synnotch effectively.

Third, we brought our project to practitioners in the related fields. We demonstrated how our project can be used in these fields and received feedbacks.

(More related works have been shown in integrated human practice.)

Education & Public Engagement

Our purpose of benefitting the world by using synthetic biology requires us to spread scientific knowledge to the general public to eliminate their misunderstanding in the field of cancer. We also bear a responsibility to inspire more and more teenagers and students to know about synthetic biology and then understand it deeply.

(More related works have been shown in our Education & Public Engagement page. )