Our preliminary research sought to answer the question, "What major environmental and health problems affect people today?" An important aspect of a biological engineering project is to first start with a problem that people want to have solved. Upon discussing this, we came up with more poignant and open-ended questions: "What problem are we trying to solve? What current methods exist in addressing the problem, and what new approaches might be tried? How does engineering biology provide a tool, or act as a component in a larger plan of action to solve the problem? Is engineering biology a necessary or desirable approach in this solution?"

Before attempting any wet-lab work, or making any major design considerations, we considered these questions carefully. Our process of asking these questions, reaching out to doctors, and looking at current synthetic biology solutions were crucial in helping us determine the direction of our project.

On this page, we’ll discuss the questions we asked ourselves and others, and how we decided to pursue our project.

Why Bugs Without Borders?

Or more specifically, why localized medicine production?

First and foremost: medicine is hard to ship. Current efforts to ship medicine are unsustainable and unreliable, and rarely do the shipments make it to the intended destination. So why keep trying to ship the medicine synthesized in centralized large pharmaceutical companies? Instead, let’s ship the factory, once, and make the medicines locally in the regions that need them the most.

News headlines from various reports of either stolen, blocked, or seized medical aid.

We hope to accelerate a growing movement to shift production of medicine delivery to the regions that need them. While it is important for us to develop the technology, essentially a living factory synthesizing essential vitamins and medicines, it is also important for us to address aspects of the problem unsolvable with science alone. We hope to analyze and understand how our project fits into existing policies and attitudes surrounding poverty and malnutrition.

How do you know this is actually a real problem?

We began our research by contacting health care practitioners around the world, including professionals in Brazil, Palau, Bolivia, Venezuela, Perú, Haití, Nicaragua, and The Dominican Republic. We asked these doctors what ailments are most common and what medicines are most needed. Nearly all the practitioners mentioned lack of adequate access to vitamins, pain relievers, and other pharmaceuticals due to insufficient supply, high cost, and high demand. By analyzing World Health Organization data, we noticed that malnutrition and pain are consistent global problems, especially in remote regions where medicine is generally less accessible Therefore, we chose to focus on the topics of vitamin deficiency and pharmaceutical shortages.

Why a GMO?

Bioengineering an organism introduces the risks associated with a genetically modified organism, but relieves the risk of simply not having the medicine at all, and reduces dependency on shipments. The biosynthetic process eliminates the risk of adding toxic ingredients, a situation that has happened in poorly regulated conventional production factories^[2].

Additionally, health care is outrageously expensive and often culturally invasive when forced upon people. For example, the Marshallese people who were eradicated from their homeland due to the extensive nuclear testing conducted by the U.S. Government in the 1940s and 50s have faced insurmountable difficulty coping with and affording traditional health care^[5].

Image sourced from NY Times, "For Pacific Islanders, Hopes and Troubles in Arkansas"

Worshipers gathered on a Sunday at Faith Full Gospel Marshallese Church.

Part of the goal was to provide a new medicine delivery approach that could be integrated more easily into already accepted diets or customs. The cultural barriers to adequate medical treatment by western standards were expanded upon in our discussion about the Marshallese who are granted residency in the United States, who pay taxes, but are not allowed to vote or hold office, or citizenship. By using an edible, nutrient dense microorganism, we hope to ease the process of cultural acceptance and integration.

Why cyanobacteria?

Conventional production of pharmaceuticals is costly, requiring a huge amount energy and laboratory equipment. The use of cyanobacteria as a host to produce pharmaceuticals is a relatively novel idea with extreme potential; they require water and minimal nutrients to proliferate and harness solar energy to fix atmospheric carbon dioxide. Off this basic sustenance, cyanobacteria can produce a broad variety of vitamins while garnering a mass composition of approximately 60% protein^{[3, 4]}. Additionally, the organisms are extremely inexpensive and easy to cultivate, proving to be a model specimen for biosynthesis of vitamins and medicines.

To learn more about our organism of interest, check out page on our target organism!

Why Acetaminophen?

We aim to biosynthetically produce acetaminophen, a common mild anesthetic and antipyretic recognized by the WHO as an essential medicine^[1] due to the feasibility of recreating the metabolic pathway in a cyanobacteria. However, in many countries with lower regulations and faulty policies regarding drug manufacturing, acetaminophen can be synthesized with lethal toxins that result in hundreds of deaths worldwide^[2]. Acetaminophen is often used in conjunction with opioid pain medications postoperatively to enhance pain relief, thus reducing reliance upon opioid pharmaceuticals^[6].

To learn more, take a look at our page on acetaminophen metabolics.

Why Vitamin B₁₂?

We aim to produce human usable vitamin B₁₂ because it is one of the few vitamins that Spirulina does not adequately produce. Vitamin B₁₂ proves to be a leading global vitamin deficiency and one of the most difficult vitamins to naturally consume, especially for vegetarians^[7]. Vitamin B₁₂ deficiency can lead to megaloblastic anemia and demyelinating nervous system disease^[8]. Additionally, both vitamins B₁₂ and B₉ are considered important prenatal vitamins for nervous system development^[9].

To learn more, take a look at our page on vitamin B₁₂ metabolics.