Team:CPU CHINA/HP/Silver
It was an ordinary workday evening, and I called my father to have a chat with him.He told me he did not go to work that day. It turned out that the high school where my father worked had an outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis. Several students as well as a math teacher were infected. As a result, schools had to suspend classes temporarily for a period of time. After hanging up the phone, I searched related information in the Internet and professional boos to learn more about tuberculosis. I was surprised that although tuberculosis is quite an old disease, it was still the leading cause of death from an infectious agent, accounting for 1.6 million deaths and a global economic burden of $12 billion in 2017. Moreover, the drug resistance is also a serious problem. Therefore, I suggested that we could regard tuberculosis treatment as our iGEM project this year. After many times of brainstorm, we decided to creat a Immunomimetic cells by using synthetic biology principle and methods. Human cells will be reprogrammed to autonomously detect and eliminate Mtb infections. The designer cells express Toll like receptor (TLR) 1/2 to recognize Mtb and CD14 to facilitate the process of recognition. In another words, the TLR1/TLR2/CD14 cluster work as a Mtb sensor. After being stimulated, the downstream NF-κB signaling pathway will be activated. Then, NF-κB induced promoters will initiate the expression of granulysin and microRNA hsa-let-7f to fight against extracellular and intracellular Mtb. In addition, we choose non-toxic PD-L1 targeting exosomes to deliver microRNA in to Mtb-infected macrophages because study has demonstrated that Mtb increase the expression of PD-L1 in macrophages. We believe that this cell-based anti-Mtb approach could serve as a valuable alternative to current antibiotic therapies and an example to stimulate development of next-generation infectious disease treatment in the post-antibiotic era.
It was an ordinary workday evening, and I called my father to have a chat with him.He told me he did not go to work that day. It turned out that the high school where my father worked had an outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis. Several students as well as a math teacher were infected. As a result, schools had to suspend classes temporarily for a period of time. After hanging up the phone, I searched related information in the Internet and professional boos to learn more about tuberculosis. I was surprised that although tuberculosis is quite an old disease, it was still the leading cause of death from an infectious agent, accounting for 1.6 million deaths and a global economic burden of $12 billion in 2017. Moreover, the drug resistance is also a serious problem. Therefore, I suggested that we could regard tuberculosis treatment as our iGEM project this year. After many times of brainstorm, we decided to creat a Immunomimetic cells by using synthetic biology principle and methods. Human cells will be reprogrammed to autonomously detect and eliminate Mtb infections. The designer cells express Toll like receptor (TLR) 1/2 to recognize Mtb and CD14 to facilitate the process of recognition. In another words, the TLR1/TLR2/CD14 cluster work as a Mtb sensor. After being stimulated, the downstream NF-κB signaling pathway will be activated. Then, NF-κB induced promoters will initiate the expression of granulysin and microRNA hsa-let-7f to fight against extracellular and intracellular Mtb. In addition, we choose non-toxic PD-L1 targeting exosomes to deliver microRNA in to Mtb-infected macrophages because study has demonstrated that Mtb increase the expression of PD-L1 in macrophages. We believe that this cell-based anti-Mtb approach could serve as a valuable alternative to current antibiotic therapies and an example to stimulate development of next-generation infectious disease treatment in the post-antibiotic era.
It was an ordinary workday evening, and I called my father to have a chat with him.He told me he did not go to work that day. It turned out that the high school where my father worked had an outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis. Several students as well as a math teacher were infected. As a result, schools had to suspend classes temporarily for a period of time. After hanging up the phone, I searched related information in the Internet and professional boos to learn more about tuberculosis. I was surprised that although tuberculosis is quite an old disease, it was still the leading cause of death from an infectious agent, accounting for 1.6 million deaths and a global economic burden of $12 billion in 2017. Moreover, the drug resistance is also a serious problem. Therefore, I suggested that we could regard tuberculosis treatment as our iGEM project this year. After many times of brainstorm, we decided to creat a Immunomimetic cells by using synthetic biology principle and methods. Human cells will be reprogrammed to autonomously detect and eliminate Mtb infections. The designer cells express Toll like receptor (TLR) 1/2 to recognize Mtb and CD14 to facilitate the process of recognition. In another words, the TLR1/TLR2/CD14 cluster work as a Mtb sensor. After being stimulated, the downstream NF-κB signaling pathway will be activated. Then, NF-κB induced promoters will initiate the expression of granulysin and microRNA hsa-let-7f to fight against extracellular and intracellular Mtb. In addition, we choose non-toxic PD-L1 targeting exosomes to deliver microRNA in to Mtb-infected macrophages because study has demonstrated that Mtb increase the expression of PD-L1 in macrophages. We believe that this cell-based anti-Mtb approach could serve as a valuable alternative to current antibiotic therapies and an example to stimulate development of next-generation infectious disease treatment in the post-antibiotic era.