Team:SYSU-Medicine/Human Practices
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HUMAN PRACTICES
Overview
Because of the increasing need of individual health care in China, more and more people are looking for a better therapy to cure cancers. In order to get better acquainted with social need and to popularize advanced therapy as well as synthetic biology. The focus of our work on human social practices consist of three parts.
Product design and improvement
Through the public survey and the interviews with specialists, we decided to choose oncolytic virus therapy and improve it again and again in order to meet the needs of patients and society.
Therapy promotion
Limited by its deficiencies of oncolytic virus, this kind of therapy is not as widespread and popular as other biotherapies. For that reason, we make an effort to engineer the virus to make it more available and harmless for clinical treatment by having interview with specialists, collaborating with other Igem teams and conducting public surveys.
Biosynthesis publicity
Our purpose for the public education part is to develop new opportunities to encourage more people to learn about synthetic biology and to shape it. In order to realize it, we took the opportunity to participate in YGA program where we have supporting education for high school students in the remote regions. We also establish our own WeChat Official Accounts Platform to propagandize oncolytic virus and synthetic biology.
Time Line
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After we harnessed our initial idea, we conducted a survey and found that the overwhelming majority of the participants put more importance in curing malignant tumor, which was consistent with our project, improving oncolytic virus therapy. Then we paid a visit to professor Zhou who was engaged in tumor immunotherapy. He advised us about the advantages and disadvantages of oncolytic virus.
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We focused on M1 virus. It was seen mostly in the tropical areas and in southern China. We then consulted with Professor Yan, who first identified M1 as an oncolytic virus, about the features of M1. We then decided to do research on improving the anticancer spectrum and lethality of M1.
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We soon ran into many difficulties in our experiments. But after communicating with professors from the college of pharmacy and the college of chemistry. We focused on the path with the most application prospect, the pro-drug system.
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We attended the after-iGEM conference in Shenzhen and listened to stories 2018 iGEMers told about their iGEM journey. We realized that this wasn’t just a contest, but a place where we share exciting thoughts and do amazing things. Later, we attended Southern China’s biggest iGEMers get-together and shared our project. During summer, we attended CCIC, China’s largest iGEM conference, looking forward to improve our project and communicate with other teams. What’s more, we also had collaborations with other iGEM teams and helped each other when we had troubles in the experiments.
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During summer vocation, our team took the opportunity to participate in YGA program where we had supporting education for high school students in the remote regions. We designed lessons about synthetic biology for high school students. “What is synthetic biology?”,” How can synthetic biology change the world?”. Then we asked students to think about their ideal world filled with synthetic biology. The last part is the introduction of Oncolytic virus.
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The ultimate aim for scientific research is the benefit of human society. Therefore, we surveyed the general public and consulted some experts. However, there is a very important link in the pharmaceutical industry chain, which is the department that manages clinical trials of drugs. In order to know the status quo of clinical drug trials and their evaluation and recommendations on our project, we visited to the GCP office of the Cancer Center of Sun Yat-Sen University and consulted the office administrator.
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We invited many virologists to have dinner together in order to have a deep conversation about virus. We started with their respective stories about their virus research. Then we talked about the current situation of oncolytic virus. Finally, we asked for their advice on our project.