Team:H14Z1 Hangzhou/Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship
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.
Best Supporting Entrepreneurship Special Prize
In previous years, iGEM had an entrepreneurship track. Teams were encouraged to build projects and focus on commercializing their work. We have now moved to an award as the best work in this area may come from teams who are not solely focused on entrepreneurship.
The Best Supporting Entrepreneurship award recognizes exceptional effort to build a business case and commercialize an iGEM project. This award is open to all teams to show that entrepreneurship is something all teams can aspire to do with their project. This award can go to an new project, or to a previous project that a team aimed to commercialize. Have you filed a provisional patent on your project/device/process? Have you raised money to build and ship products? Have you pitched your idea to investors and received money? As always in iGEM, the aim is to impress the judges!
To compete for the Best Supporting Entrepreneurship prize, please describe your work on this page and also fill out the description on the judging form.
You must also delete the message box on the top of this page to be eligible for this prize.
Inspiration
You can look at what other teams did to get some inspiration!
Here are a few examples:
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.