Competition/Tracks/Therapeutics
Therapeutics Track
One of the most popular tracks in iGEM has always been Health & Medicine. There were over 50 teams in this track in 2015 competing for a track prize and several nominations. Because of the number of teams competing for this award, iGEM HQ decided to split the Health & Medicine track into two new tracks: Diagnostics and Therapeutics.
How do you know if your project fits into the diagnostics track, the therapeutics track or maybe both? It depends on where you choose to put the focus of your project. Is your team more concerned with detecting illness and disease, or in treating it? What parts have you made? Does your project detect pathogens or disease states, or does it pave a way to treat medical conditions? If you are working on both issues, you may want to think about what aspect of your project is working better before selecting a track, or spliting your team and having two projects.
While there have yet to be any iGEM projects formally entered into this new track, some projects from previous years can be re-categorized into the therapeutics track. Here are links to previous projects and a few excellent teams that would fit well into the new therapeutics track:
SYSU-MEDICINE 2016
MSCavalry: MSCs of Next Generation
With great power to suppress adaptive immune system as well as innate immune system, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are promising candidates for cell-based therapy to treat inflammatory diseases, such as IBD, encephalitis, etc. However, clinical trials of MSCs have demonstrated that only a few MSCs can indeed arrive at the inflamed tissue after systematic administration and exert their immunomodulatory function due to the inefficient homing ability of MSCs. This year, MSCs of next generation are coming. In our project, we will 1) Empower MSCs with a series of chemokine receptors in order to ensure its effective homing. 2) Introduce several kinds of positioning system, such as luciferase to locate in vivo MSC and assure their arrival at the inflamed tissue. 3) Design a switch to kill MSCs when they differentiate into other types of cells. Finally, we will confirm our engineered MSCs in animal models, such as IBD and DTH.
SYSU-MEDICINE 2016
MSCavalry: MSCs of Next Generation
With great power to suppress adaptive immune system as well as innate immune system, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are promising candidates for cell-based therapy to treat inflammatory diseases, such as IBD, encephalitis, etc. However, clinical trials of MSCs have demonstrated that only a few MSCs can indeed arrive at the inflamed tissue after systematic administration and exert their immunomodulatory function due to the inefficient homing ability of MSCs. This year, MSCs of next generation are coming. In our project, we will 1) Empower MSCs with a series of chemokine receptors in order to ensure its effective homing. 2) Introduce several kinds of positioning system, such as luciferase to locate in vivo MSC and assure their arrival at the inflamed tissue. 3) Design a switch to kill MSCs when they differentiate into other types of cells. Finally, we will confirm our engineered MSCs in animal models, such as IBD and DTH.
