Team:NJU-China/HP/Gold Integrated
Activities
I
The data we got form the microblog are analyzed to deepen our understanding of people’s perspecetive.
Figure 1 the frequency of all emoji (2)
The top 3 emoji have the following rank order of frequency: tears, heart and simile, and the proportion of them are 17%, 10% and 7%. Other emoji seems much less popular than them.
Figure 2 frequency more than 3000
Since the emoji “simile” means that I am not pleasant with what happened, we can notice that two of the top 3 emoji show sad and unhappy mood towards the topic, which indicates the emotional keynote.
Moreover, we classified the emoji according to the feelings it shows.
Moreover, we classified the emoji according to the feelings it shows.
Figure 3 the feelings they expressed
Comparing to the positive emotions, the negative emotions have a proportion of 53% and are more diversiform. Overall, the emotions netizens have expressed reveal that they are eager to get rid of obesity and happy to be slim. However, the predicament they face when they try to lose some weight make them generate negative emotions.
II
During this research, 258 men of different gender and age took part in it.
Figure 4 the feelings they expressed
Figure 5 proportion of different age
We collected their opinion about obesity and ways of losing weight in order to find out our direction.
Figure 6 idea of diet (blue: effective; orange: not effective; pink: difficult to hold on; green: difficult to keep the weight off)
Figure 7 idea of sports (blue: effective; orange: not effective; pink: difficult to hold on; green: difficult to keep the weight off)
Figure 8 idea of weight-reducing aid (blue: effective; orange: not effective; pink: difficult to hold on; green: difficult to keep the weight off)
Figure 9 idea of bariatric surgery (blue: effective; orange: not effective; pink: difficult to hold on; green: difficult to keep the weight off; darker blue: do not know)
The reflection indicates that exiting ways to lose weight have different kinds of weakness. So it is high time that we should invite a new therapy which overcome all or most of these problems.
Figure 10 why people choose not to use weight-reducing aid (orange: side-effect; pink: price; blue: effect; green: not know much; darker blue: others)
Fig 10 tells us that side-effect is the most concerned problem about weight-losing aid. So our primary work is now clear.
III
Figure 11 our teammate is reporting our work
Figure 12 our advisor is illustrating our project
IV
When talking about the best method of losing weight, the patient gave most credit to the treatment of useful medicine, compared to other ways like diet or exercise. Our interviewee believed it was subcutaneous drugs that hleped him reduce about 20 kilograms while battling against Type Ⅱ diabete in the past few years. And as for the suitable method of administration, he thought it doesn't matter whether the drugs are oral or injected, valuing medicine efficacy more than other aspects.
V
To have a professional opinion on the current situation of obesity and further shape our project direction, we interviewed with doctors from department of endocrinology of Nanjing General Hospital. Most attempts on the research of antiobesity drugs are focused on technical problem, but the acceptance of patients and feasibility are less discussed. Nanjing General Hospital is a grade III, class A hospital. These suggestions would not only be used for the further improvement of our project, but also provide a general concept of the safety issue that must be dealt with when synthetic biology encounters clinical medicine. Their professional experience and advices are valuable if we want to apply synthetic biology to a broader clinical field in the near future.
Figure 13 lecture our project to doctors
Hazards of obesity
Obesity is associated with increased risks of diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, cancer and heart disease, for example, the incidence of hypertension of obesity people is 2 to 6 times higher than those in normal weight. Not only that, but doctors also point out that obesity can cause mental illness. Obesity people, especially young women, feel inferior to show themselves in public, and lack of confidence makes them miss out opportunities.
Obesity treatment
1)Drug therapy, healthy diet and lifestyle as well as physical exercise are preferentially adopted when the doctors propose a treatment, mostly because of the feasibility and less side effect. However, most of them have the problems of insisting, rebounding, etc.
2)Surgery, such as Liposuction and Sleeve Gastrectomy, compared to other obesity treatments, are used in situations when the patients are in an urgent need to lose weight. Nevertheless, the treatment cost is expensive and the side effect is inevitable.
2)Surgery, such as Liposuction and Sleeve Gastrectomy, compared to other obesity treatments, are used in situations when the patients are in an urgent need to lose weight. Nevertheless, the treatment cost is expensive and the side effect is inevitable.
Figure 14 listen to doctors' advise
Molecular targeting therapy
1)Concerns
Doctor Qiu affirmed us for creativity and novelty of our project, but she also shared some concerns. First of all, there may be unknown risks in our project, since we use siRNA to knock down the expression of bcl2, which is a key gene in cell apoptosis, certainly, it will lead to a chain reaction, what’s the fate of adipose cells debris? Besides, when it comes to nucleic acid drug, extra gene expression must be valued. Moreover, hardly there is targeted drug application in weight lose, thus trust issue of patients is a problem. Doctor Qiu joked that if she was fat, even if our project had meaningful effect on mice, she was unwilling to try this drug, because unlike cancer, obesity is not that mortal, especially when other options are available, why would anybody risk their lives just to become slim. Furthermore, the sustainability of drug effect should also be taken into consideration, the patients can accept intravenous injection one week every month, but it’s obvious that patients getting a shot everyday is inadvisable, doctor Qiu argued that siRNA would finally be degraded and long-term drug effect was a direction we need to do some efforts.
2)Reflection
Targeted ablation of adipose tissue blazes a new path for obesity therapy, but the road is sown with thorns. We need to conduct intense monitoring for metabolic level after the mice being injected with our drug, and drug efficiency should be evaluated in the long run. If this drug is to be put into application in the future, safety assessment should be strictly executed, our aim is not only remove the fat, but also assure other tissues remain intact.
Doctor Qiu affirmed us for creativity and novelty of our project, but she also shared some concerns. First of all, there may be unknown risks in our project, since we use siRNA to knock down the expression of bcl2, which is a key gene in cell apoptosis, certainly, it will lead to a chain reaction, what’s the fate of adipose cells debris? Besides, when it comes to nucleic acid drug, extra gene expression must be valued. Moreover, hardly there is targeted drug application in weight lose, thus trust issue of patients is a problem. Doctor Qiu joked that if she was fat, even if our project had meaningful effect on mice, she was unwilling to try this drug, because unlike cancer, obesity is not that mortal, especially when other options are available, why would anybody risk their lives just to become slim. Furthermore, the sustainability of drug effect should also be taken into consideration, the patients can accept intravenous injection one week every month, but it’s obvious that patients getting a shot everyday is inadvisable, doctor Qiu argued that siRNA would finally be degraded and long-term drug effect was a direction we need to do some efforts.
2)Reflection
Targeted ablation of adipose tissue blazes a new path for obesity therapy, but the road is sown with thorns. We need to conduct intense monitoring for metabolic level after the mice being injected with our drug, and drug efficiency should be evaluated in the long run. If this drug is to be put into application in the future, safety assessment should be strictly executed, our aim is not only remove the fat, but also assure other tissues remain intact.
