Team:JNFLS/Demonstrate
JNFLS
Demonstrate
Fighting colon cancer with yogurt?
Yes, polish your eyes, it is not a joke but a reality in our project. As we know, many kinds of tumors have characteristic anaerobic and necrotic areas, which is one of important reasons that tumors are resistant to radiotherapy and chemotherapy. The fdhF promoter is an hypoxia induced promoter that initiates expression only in an oxygen-deficient environment, which is used for initiation the expression of invasin gene and hyl gene to invade, consequently induce apoptosis of colon cancer.
In order to realize our dreams, firstly, we have systematically learned the safety requirements of experimtents and operations. before we went to lab (https://2017.igem.org/Team:JNFLS/Safety). And in our project design, we also considered the biosafety problem, so we introduced the plasmid suicide system into the project. (https://2017.igem.org/Team:JNFLS/Design)
In HP, we interviewed the doctor working in Qilu Hospital, knowing that current effective and relative safe treatment of colon cancer is surgery. But some patients are not willing to accept it because the surgery needs to cut out anus, and sometimes consequent infections may be lethal. Doctors never tried gene therapy. Molecular targeted anti-tumor agents are sometimes used. Nonetheless, the price of drugs is very high, most of the patients can not afford it. So we were going to develop a gene therapy for colon cancer with cheap and convenient way. In order to know the public understanding and acceptance for gene therapy, we did public propaganda and survey in some community and Science Museum. From the survey we found that safety and cost of gene therapy are widely concerned problems. So we modified our project to introduce the plasmid suicide system and probiotics Nissle 1917 as plasmid delivery in our project for more safety and less cost. This propaganda and survey improved well our project. （https://2017.igem.org/Team:JNFLS/HP/Gold_Integrated）
In our project, we have completed the sensitivity detection of fdhF promoter and tetR repressible promoter. Also, We verified the TAT plasmid actually have the effect of inducing apoptosis in colon cancer cell line LOVO. Since our project aimed to use Nissle 1917 as the plasmid delivery, we also explored if Nissle 1917 is used for making yogurt in laboratory. The result indicated that it is possible because its character and pH value are very similar with the yogurt bought from store. (https://2017.igem.org/Team:JNFLS/Results)
