Team:Hong Kong HKU/Description

Description: Ideas and General Concepts

Design Inspiration

Before we discuss the design of our project, we would like to discuss here why we have chosen to DNA nanotechnology to detect Huntington’s disease

Huntington’s Disease

Huntington’s disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder that results in the death of brain cells. Genetic mutations, namely the trinucleotide repeats in the Huntingtin gene (HTT) located on Chromosome 4, lead to the development of HD.1 Though the disease is incurable, early diagnosis can help to better relieve symptoms by allowing treatments to start sooner. In the early stages of HD, only subtle changes in personality, cognitive and physical abilities can be identified.

Early Diagnosis of Huntington's disease

Diagnosis of HD (in cases where the parents do not have HD) is usually carried out only after symptoms are identified and the patient approaches the medical professionals. As the early symptoms are generally not severe enough to be recognized as HD symptoms on their own, the treatment is usually delayed. Although commercially available RT-PCR arrays for Huntington’s disease gene targets do exist, they tend to be time-consuming and require a level of lab expertise. According to the interviews conducted with the medical workers using various diagnostics tools, their primary concerns were the accuracy of the test and the ease of use (add a link to survey here). We hope to allow prompt treatment with our non-invasive and highly accessible diagnostic method.