Team:ETH Zurich
Cancer kills over 8 million people every year. That's the entire population of Switzerland!
We need more specific therapies because current approaches result in many side-effects.
Thats why we invented CATE, the first all-in-one living cancer therapeutic with an integrated two-step safety mechanism.
A living cure to a living disease!
CATE consists of the non-pathogenic bacterium E. coli Nissle that has the intrinsic ability to home preferentially in tumors. It features two safety checkpoint mechanisms to ensure only tumor cells are damaged.
We are engineering E. coli Nissle to carry a MRI contrast and a cytotoxic agent so it can deliver both components to tumor sites.
Treatment
CATE is administered intravenously, travels through the blood and colonizes tumors where the bacteria form a highly dense layer between the live and dead zone of the tumor
The high density of bacterial cells and the overproduction of lactate by the tumor together activate the first steps of CATE.
Circuit
To achieve all these novel functions, we designed a genetic circuit that is distributed over two de novo synthesized DNA molecules. All functions were tested and optimized to make the resulting circuit as safe and well characterized as possible.
Engineering
We increased the understanding of the systems underlying mathematics by simulating the functions with models. The models were also used to define important questions to clarify in experiments.
Experimentally, we collected data to support and refine our models and to show that our system works.
Achievements
We worked goal oriented and could experimentally confirm the predictions of the models. After testing every function individually, we combined them one after the other in milestone experiments to show the system in action. We created and characterized new BioBrick parts that are important for the iGEM competition and are freely for the future iGEM teams.
Human Practices
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Team
We are an interdisciplinary team of eight master students of ETH Zürich who compete in the iGEM championship against hundreds of other teams from all over the world.
