Throughout the brainstorming period of our project, our ideas were centered around creating something that could benefit humankind. While looking for potential problems that we could solve, we stumbled upon the field of onco-therapeutics and that caught our attention. With proper research and planning, we came up with the idea of Coca Coli. Read on to find out more.
Cancer
Cancer is one of the biggest health concerns faced today. A recent report shows that among all cancers, colorectal cancer ranks 3rd in its incidence (10.2% of all cases) and 2nd in mortality (9.2%) [1] . While developed countries have effective screening methods, developing countries are often worst hit by this disease. As treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy turn out to be costly and often cause severe systemic toxicity, there is a great need for off-beat and cost-effective solutions to battle this disease. Our project focuses on colon cancer but we envision that it can be developed as a targeted therapy for any cancer in the near future
The Action Plan
We tried to break down the current therapeutic shortcomings into parts and found that major problems associated with existing interventions are side effects and the cost of treatments.
Inspired by BactoGrip, MicroBeacon and Solution, we at IISER Tirupati want to further these projects with our inputs. We aim to engineer a bacterium “CoCa coli” which satisfies the following criteria:
- Specifically target and bind to colon cancer cells to reduce the chances of the off-target release of our drug: The Recognition Module
- Synthesise and secrete a “drug” upon binding which would suppress tumour growth: The Suppressor Module
Using these modules, our final aim was to develop a potential therapeutic “drug” that could help make colon cancer treatment cost-effective and targeted. Find out how we did this in our
Description page!
"We play with bacteria and sometimes they play us"
