A variety of liver diseases occur throughout the world. Glutathione (GSH) and S-adenosyl methionine (SAM) have been applied to prevent and treat a variety of liver diseases. In the project we created the new concept of “smart yogurt” by engineering the food-grade Lactococcus lactis NZ9000 with the composite modules, including the syntheses of GSH, SAM and adhesion factor A. Our smart products not only have much higher contents of SAM and GSH, but also hold high-density of colonization-prone cells for potential biosynthesis of these two liver-protective factors in our gastrointestinal tracts. Due to the advantages over commercial yogurts in the daily life, our smart yogurt technology attracts several pharmaceutical companies to sponsor our iGEM team for this competition. Then we applied one Chinese invention patent (App No. 2018111840951) to protect it. With further efforts in social activities, our smart yogurt project will have an increasing commercial potential in industry.

Patents and intellectual property

If your team is seriously considering commercializing and looking into building a company after the competition, you may want to look at how you are going to protect your work and secure investment. Investors will usually require some form of intellectual protection, so you may want to investigate how to apply for a patent or provisional patent in your country and region before disclosing your project at iGEM. Remember that you can only be evaluated in iGEM based on what you share on your wiki and at the Jamboree, so any work you don't present can't count towards your project.

This is an area where we are different as we care about sharing, openness and contributing to the community and investors don't always agree with these values. It is up to you and your team to decide what to do. Remember that most universities have a commercialization department and that you can talk to them before coming to a decision.