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− | + | Influenza is an infectious disease caused by influenza virus. There is usually an outbreak every year in the world, Hong Kong is not excluded: | |
− | is usually an outbreak every year in the world, Hong | + | <br> |
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+ | According to the latest figures (up to 17 August 2017) from the Department of Health, HKSAR, 536 cases of severe illness and 388 deaths were recorded, affecting Hong Kong a lot every year undoubtedly in terms of public healthcare system, economy(please visit our <a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Description">description page</a>). In order to let our design suit the real needs of potential users, it is necessary to understand their concerns and integrate them into our project. | ||
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There are 4 major potential users: medical expert, chicken farmer, government, general public. | There are 4 major potential users: medical expert, chicken farmer, government, general public. | ||
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<b>1. Professor Chan Kay Sheung, Paul (13 April 2017)</b> | <b>1. Professor Chan Kay Sheung, Paul (13 April 2017)</b> | ||
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− | + | Before starting our project, we interviewed Professor Paul Chan at the Department of Microbiology, Prince of Wales Hospital. Professor Paul Chan is an Honorary Consultant in Microbiology of the Hong Kong Hospital Authority. He is also a member of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network of World Health Organization. We believe that his advice will be very useful because he is an expert in molecular methods for rapid diagnosis and strain characterization.</u>. | |
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− | Professor Chan had explained the whole process of influenza detection, from sample collection to standard diagnosis procedures in detail. | + | Professor Chan had explained the whole process of influenza detection, from sample collection to standard diagnosis procedures in detail. Initially, we believe that we can just collect the patient saliva for testing. However, he pointed out that actually there is a verity of sources of sample can be collected from patient: Nasopharyngeal aspirate is the most sensitive source to be examined, however, assistance of nurse is required, while throat swab is the common method adopted in clinic due to its easier manipulation and collection, but lower amount of virus can be found here, leading to lower accuracy. Thus, he emphasized if the sensitivity of the product we designed is similar to that of PCR reaction, the source limitation and profession are no longer an obstacle. |
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− | + | After listening to his advice, we decided to package our design as “point of care”, applicable in both hospital and clinic, especially useful in nightshift and peak season. Initially, we hope to design toehold switches that detect all subtypes of flu. However, Professor Chan pointed out that distinguishing all the subtype of influenza in human is not very significant in tackling flu because current medicine can already defeat all types of influenza. He emphasized the importance of subtyping avian influenza virus because avian influenza has a much higher mortality rate compared with other mild flu. He explained the seriousness of H5N1 and H7N9 in Hong Kong (please visit our <a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Description">description page</a>). We agreed that having rapid on-site subtyping method for avian influenza is of the utmost importance. Therefore, we decided to construct toehold switch especially for subtyping avian influenza. | |
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<center><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/b/bd/Prof_chan.jpeg" width="500px" height="auto"></center> | <center><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/b/bd/Prof_chan.jpeg" width="500px" height="auto"></center> | ||
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− | Similar to what Prof Chan suggested, Professor Sung also agreed that the project can be divided into two directions: medical diagnosis and influenza subtyping. He suggested that we can focus on influenza A in medical diagnosis track because of its high mutation rate. As for the latter, he appreciated our idea as subtyping characterization kit of influenza is rare in the market. | + | Similar to what Prof Chan suggested, Professor Sung also agreed that the project can be divided into two directions: medical diagnosis and influenza subtyping. He suggested that we can focus on influenza A in medical diagnosis track because of its high mutation rate. As for the latter, he appreciated our idea as subtyping characterization kit of influenza is rare in the market. However, he pointed out that chemical species in the patients sample may interfere with our cell free system. His advice leaded us to investigate if pH can interfere our reporter protein (please visit our <a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Experiments">experiment page</a>) . |
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<b>1. The new territories chicken breeders association (10 July 2017)</b> | <b>1. The new territories chicken breeders association (10 July 2017)</b> | ||
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− | We interviewed a representative from the association. Before the interview, we guessed they may be interested a little bit as they suffer the loss of money during central slaughtering. Surprisingly, they were almost acceptable to the arrangements from the government because they thought that Avian influenza detection should be conducted by | + | We interviewed a representative from the association. Before the interview, we guessed they may be interested a little bit as they suffer the loss of money during central slaughtering. Surprisingly, they were almost acceptable to the arrangements from the government because they thought that Avian influenza detection should be conducted by position with no conflict of interest, which is the government in their opinions. <br> |
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<center><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/3/34/Chicken_association.png" width="300px" height="auto"></center> | <center><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/3/34/Chicken_association.png" width="300px" height="auto"></center> | ||
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<p style="font-family: roboto;font-size:115%;"> | <p style="font-family: roboto;font-size:115%;"> | ||
<u><b>Our Action</b></u><br> | <u><b>Our Action</b></u><br> | ||
− | During the interview with Professor Chan, we know that point-of-care test for human influenza is quite common nowadays in spite of their high cost, there is nearly no rapid kit focusing on Avian influenza subtyping, indicating that it may be a new direction of our product. | + | During the interview with Professor Chan, we know that point-of-care test for human influenza is quite common nowadays in spite of their high cost, there is nearly no rapid kit focusing on Avian influenza subtyping, indicating that it may be a new direction of our product. This further consolidated the direction of our project. |
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− | In the third part, we focus more on the opinions of our design, out of our expectation, more than 70% respondents are interested in and willing to purchase our products for detection, and feeling more secure and short detection time are the major motivations. On another hand, 52.4% respondents among those are not interested in the rapid test by ranking from 1 to 3 think that there is no actual need to undergo detection by themselves proactively. When we kept asking the reasons behind, almost all of them think influenza is not a big problem. However, by recalling what Prof Chan and Prof Sung had mentioned, early detection may help alleviate/reduce the damages brought by rare type of influenza under the fact that vaccine protection may be insufficient because of fast mutation rate and presence of various subtypes of virus, reflecting the significance of promotion and education, which is highly related to our design: only people with high awareness, our design can function in maximum through quick recognition and quick treatment afterwards. | + | In the third part, we focus more on the opinions of our design (please visit our <a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Prototype">prototype page</a>), out of our expectation, more than 70% respondents are interested in and willing to purchase our products for detection, and feeling more secure and short detection time are the major motivations. On another hand, 52.4% respondents among those are not interested in the rapid test by ranking from 1 to 3 think that there is no actual need to undergo detection by themselves proactively. When we kept asking the reasons behind, almost all of them think influenza is not a big problem. However, by recalling what Prof Chan and Prof Sung had mentioned, early detection may help alleviate/reduce the damages brought by rare type of influenza under the fact that vaccine protection may be insufficient because of fast mutation rate and presence of various subtypes of virus, reflecting the significance of promotion and education (please visit our <a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/HP/Silver">public engagement page</a>), which is highly related to our design: only people with high awareness, our design can function in maximum through quick recognition and quick treatment afterwards. |
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− | Considering negative perspectives against the use of E.coli may be held by the general public (E.coli is employed in the manufacture of biobricks), we want to evaluate their degree of acceptance, and try to explain the principles behind more. Similar to our prediction, most people feel disturbed when mentioning the involvement of E.coli, however, almost all respondents gain their composure after the explanation (emphasize that E.coli is the platform to produce biobrick—the detection tool and the users will not directly contact E.coli) and around 75% people accept such application in our design eventually. | + | Considering negative perspectives against the use of E.coli may be held by the general public (E.coli is employed in the manufacture of cell free system and biobricks), we want to evaluate their degree of acceptance, and try to explain the principles behind more. Similar to our prediction, most people feel disturbed when mentioning the involvement of E.coli, however, almost all respondents gain their composure after the explanation (emphasize that E.coli is the platform to produce biobrick—the detection tool and the users will not directly contact E.coli) and around 75% people accept such application in our design eventually. |
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− | + | Although avian influenza doesn’t affect Hong Kong recently, it is still considered as endemic in poultry in six countries (Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam) according to WHO. If we would like to promote our product to them, we should know about their opinions. Therefore, we conducted the same questionnaires in some of the countries (but with the third part of questionnaire only), including Bangladesh (16), India (26), Vietnam (33) (the number inside the bracket indicates the number of respondents respectively). Similar to the trends in Hong Kong, more than half people are interested in using our design for detection, however, half of the respondents in Bangladesh are indifferent to our design. When investigating deeply the reasons behind, they thought the detection kit is unnecessary and be afraid of the high price, meanwhile, they also concern the accuracy. Such attitudes also can be shown in the last question, no matter in Bangladesh (100%), India (75%), Vietnam (40%, but still accounts for the highest proportion among all parameters), they all regard accuracy, ie. sensitivity and specificity as their first choice, which is correspondent with the results in Hong Kong (75%), high accuracy will be our ultimate goal in future work.<br> | |
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<center><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/9/9e/Bangladesh.png" width="200px" height="auto"> | <center><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/9/9e/Bangladesh.png" width="200px" height="auto"> |
Revision as of 11:37, 31 October 2017