The ideal medicine is not a perfect treatment - it’s a cure.

However, major roadblocks still exist in implementation.

Advancements in the area of genetic modification have opened avenues towards numerous tracks of scientific development. In particular, the demand for permanent health solutions has sparked massive interest in gene therapy.

Despite the potential for establishing an ideal medicine, there are numerous challenges that development in this field faces. In particular, limitations in the selection of a specific target site for integration of genetic material, avoidance of immune responses, methodology pertaining to gene delivery, and maintenance of gene expression all pose a threat to the potential for gene therapy to become common practice.

Solution:

Our Snip, Equip, Flip system allows for the integration and maintenance of large-scale genetic constructs in eukaryotic systems

This year, the University of Calgary’s project aims to overcome the aforementioned obstacles with which large-scale genetic modification currently struggles. Our system allows for the creation of eukaryotic cell lines via stable integration and expression of exogenous genes. Developing a simple and reliable method that can be used by experienced and entrant researchers alike opens the door for a vast array of scientific discovery. Ideally, the system introduced in this project would move beyond applications in research to form the foundation of a novel gene therapy.

By complementing the specificity of targeting that CRISPR/Cas9 offers with the much larger integration capabilities of FLP recombinase and beta resolvase, gene integration into eukaryotic genomes becomes a simple process of Snip, Equip, Flip. In addition, the expression of integrated genes can be protected and maintained over time by adding flanking chromatin modifying elements.

Although most of our efforts centred around building the toolkit for gene integration into eukaryotic cells described above, we also built a multi-cloning site and introduced novel eukaryotic parts into the iGEM registry. Independent of the wet-lab work, the team created both a droplet microfluidic device designed for a scalable gene transfer system and SARA, a software tool built for iGEM participants to find past software projects. The team also explored the possibilities of how our project could affect current and future aspects of society through our human practice work.