Team:XHD-WS-Wuhan-A/Human Practices
Human Practice
In order to set a clear direction for our project future development，we launched the human practice research carefully.On top of experiments, we also need interaction with the world to revise our project and to popularize the ideas of synthetic biology and our project in the society. For these purposes, we have conducted human practices, including questionnaire survey, the interview with experts, and the propaganda.
Project inspiration
About our project, its original inspiration comes from a brainstorm discussion during the winter holiday training. During the meeting, our team member Zimo Gu shared a story about her classmate who was misdiagnosed as having gastric cancer. This desperate outcome heavily damaged her spirit and caused serious depression. This pending result remained until the treatment started; fortunately, the hospital made a second diagnosis which indicated that the previous diagnosis was a mistake. This story inspired us to think and brought our attentions to gastric cancer.
We had a conversation with our instructor Professor Zhou and told her about our interests in gastric cancer. Professor Zhou's main research direction is the mechanism of gene expression regulated by microRNA. After discussing with her, we expressed our orientation plan on the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer. She firmly supported us on our research program, because many cancers are related to abnormal regulation of microRNA.
Photo1: Disscution with Professor Zhou
Interview with experts
1. Interview with Professor Yang at Wuhan Union Hospital
To receive more suggestions on our project, we interviewed Professor Yang of oncology department in Wuhan Union Medical College Hospital. We learnt from him that the diagnostic rate of early gastric cancer in China is relatively lower than most of other countries in Asia. China is less developed than other countries like Japan and Korea, where people above 40 years old are demanded to have gastroscopy in their regular physical examinations. The gastroscopy is the most common and effective way among existing methods of diagnosis, but financial situation of China is not well-developed enough to conduct it in regular examinations. Particularly, some poverty-stricken areas can’t afford the equipment for gastroscopy. Another reason is that gastroscopy is not considered important among people in China.
Giving the inspirations, we had an idea about using the synthetic biology method to solve some limitations of current gastric cancer diagnosis methods such as being too expensive and not able to provide early diagnosis. On this basis, we can also provide some intinctions about treatment methods together. Therefore, under the guidance of Mr. Zhou, we launched a fierce discussion within the group, searched for references, and discussed the proper diagnosis methods for gastric cancer. Through literature research, we found that many microRNAs expressed specifically and abnormally in gastric cancer, and these microRNAs became our focus.
Photo2: Interview with Professor Yang
2. Interview with Professor Xie at HuaZhong University of Science and Technology
In addition, we also interviewed Professor Xie of Huazhong University of science and technology, whose main research direction was microbiology and system synthetic biology. He could help us more in our design from the perspective of synthetic biology.
After the introduction of our projects, Professor Xie gave affirmation to our design and creativity firstly. He suggested that the project is innovative and challenging for senior high. Then he pointed out that we needed to make the project design more integrated and gave
Professor Xie helped us build up a deeper understanding of synthetic biology. He indicated that synthetic biology was more systematic, engineered and automatic than genetic engineering which modified targets on gene level and metabolic engineering which was on metabolic pathway.
Photo3: Interview with Professor Xie
Important gains: Professor Xie mentioned that how to obtain the cells in the patient's body in vitro was a relatively important problem. In this regard, we consulted the literature and found that we could use microfluidic technology to achieve the separation of tumor cells in vitro. Then we proposed an imagination: whether the results can be obtained quickly through the combination of immobilization culture and detection. Finally, we had a design for future application. See future plan for details.
The expert interviews helped us to clarify the project direction and design details. Our project topic was fixed: the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer based on microRNA.
Questionnaire survey
At the same time, to make our project closer to the society, we have completed some investigation activities to understand residents and students' understanding of synthetic biology, microRNA, and gastric cancer—especially the diagnosis of gastric cancer. We designed an electronic questionnaire and conducted an online survey using the Wechat public platform. In addition, when participating in the Low-carbon Science and technology activities in Hangzhou, offline questionnaires were issued, and 239 questionnaires were collected. We processed the data of these questionnaires, the results showed that there was a high expectation for our detector to work on the early stage of gastric cancer and possibly become a potential treatment, but the understanding of synthetic biology was relatively low. Here is a more detailed analysis.
Sample description
A total of 239 samples in major provinces of China. The largest number of respondents was from Hubei. Sample age group, gender distribution is uniform, education background is mainly high school or above.
Knowledge about stomach cancer
Question:Do you know anything about stomach cancer?
Question:Do you know anything about microRNA?
Question:What do you know about the current diagnostic methods of gastric cancer?
Nearly 45.19% of the sample know about the x-ray barium series, which is similar to the of tumor marker45.19%. Also, there are 62.76% are familiar with thefibroendoscopy,and 32.64% know about abdominal ultrasound.What's more,there are 29.29% of the sample know about the Helical CT and positron emission imaging examination.
The expectation and acceptance
Question:Do you expect our new cancer treatment?
Question:Do you know anything about synthetic biology?
Nearly 82.43% of the samples know nothing about synthetic biology.And only 17.57%of the samples know the synthetic biology.
Question:We try to use synthetic biology technology to develop a technical means with monitor microRNA expression level in gastric cancer so as to promote early diagnosis of gastric cancer. Do you expect it?
Nearly all of the sample show that they were expect it.
Question:If possible, will you allow your family receive this treatment in the future?
Nearly 80.83% of the samples agree with the new diagnostic methods of gastric cancer and less than 13.81% believe it is very dangerous in the reality. From these data, the conclusion can be reached that there is a relative clear recognition about diagnostic methods of gastric cancer and the high acceptance of use. Since our diagnostic methods is efficient, it will be largely accepted and used by the public as long as we introduce it.
The results of the questionnaire show that:
The general public has basic understanding in gastric cancer, but most of them have only heard about it (63.6%). The diagnosis of gastric cancer is still limited to the common methods, and there are many misunderstandings. The results of the questionnaire showed that most of the public lacked knowledge of synthetic biology and understandings of microRNA. This result made us think of popularizing this knowledge and arousing the public's awareness in our public propaganda, and these update activities would better promote our project. On the other hand, the public showed great expectations in creating a cheaper and more convenient way to diagnose gastric cancer by using synthetic biology, and these supports brought us hope and confidence to better carry out our project.
Field Reasearch in Kindstar Global Company
According to the questionnaire, the general public are familiar with the conventional diagnosis methods, but only 9.23% of them possess the knowledge of other gastric cancer diagnosis methods. For better understandings in these new diagnosis methods, we went to investigate a clinical testing company.
Yichen Li, Jieyu Yang, Kexin Huang, these three members of our team XHD-WS-Wuhan-A conducted a field research in Kindstar Global company, a high-end medical inspection service group in China. The company's technicians showed us around for some laboratories and described the testing and research projects that the company could provide in areas of genetics, blood, cancer and so on. We have learnt about the methods they used in projects about gastric cancer particularly and found they basically have three methods to detect gastric cancer by testing chemiluminescence, mRNA and gene sequencing.
Chemiluminescence testing can be only used as an auxiliary diagnosis on gastric cancer, while gene sequencing is only targeted on potential hereditary diffuse gastric cancer. Both are limited and supplementary diagnosis methods. On the contrary, the method using mRNA testing, which is also what we are doing, “is promising and prospective, as the technician said. She also gave positive reviews toward our project,“I came to know that you guys have already acquired results. Your project’s design and following implementation are really impressing and convincible.”
Photo3/4: We are in Kindstar Global Company
Later, we had a discussion with our supervisor Professor Zhou. We have put forward a lot of assumptions: the initial plan of our project was to find miRNA specifically expressed in different stages of gastric cancer(Early stage, mid stage and late stage), and we could using these merits to distinguish and diagnose gastric cancer in different stages. Our experiment was making progress for finding the microRNA-148a and microRNA-198a which would specifically expressed in early stage and mid stage of gastric cancer, but the demarcation line between the mid stage and late stage was not so obvious, so the experiment cannot be carried out as expected. In order to find a solution, we interviewed Professor Yang again, as well as Kindstar Global company.
Photo6: Interview with technician
First, we showed Professor Yang our latest project design and plan in detail: we hope to make a low-cost and convenient detector plate for gastric cancer screening by using synthetic biology. He was very pleased to see the in-depth progress of our project and gave a high evaluation.
On the details of our project design, professor yang suggested that we should employ multiple miRNAs in order to decrease false positive rate because there was the cross regulation. This advice enlightened us to screen more miRNAs. This made us consider that we needed to select more specific miRNAs to avoid false positive in different periods.
In addition, Professor Yang told us, "it is not significant to distinguish the screening of gastric cancer in the middle and late stage. Because in the development stage of gastric cancer is not strictly divided into mid-term or late, and if it is late gastric cancer, the treatment methods would be very different. Therefore, you should follow the principle of ‘early detection and early treatment’ to carry out your project. If you group select the microRNA team with high expression in the whole gastric cancer, you could also consider adding a few more binding sites on the Detector to enhance its detection effect. "
Therefore, based on the existing results and interviews with experts, we finally adjusted the project theme: the early diagnosis and future treatment of gastric cancer.
IHP
From our initial idea to our final "detector" plan, the whole idea is constantly seeking and finding inspirations to improve our program in the process of HP. During the launching of our project, we also encountered many problems, such as not able to find microRNAs of specific expression during the middle and late stage of the gastric cancer, expression of detector designing problem, and what prospect our detector will have in the future application. These problems have been solved step by step in the process of HP.
1. Inspiration
We conduct brainstorm with Professor Zhou to determine the general direction of the project
2. Plan for diagnosis and treatment
By interviewing Professor Yang from Wuhan Xiehe Hospital and Professor Xie from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, we determined the plan of our project.
3. When we didn't select specific miRNAs for gastric cancer in the middle and late stages according to the early expectation of the project, we went to Kingstar company for field research. According to the results of the survey, there are common monitoring methods to detect gastric cancer by stages. However, early stage screening was the technical difficulty at present, which fixed our project focus on early screening and treatment of gastric cancer.
4. In the second interview with oncologist Professor Yang, the detector was upgraded to version 2.0 with optimization.
5. During the interview with Professor Huazhong University of Science and Technology, the application direction and future plan of our detector were added.
Address
XHD-WS-Wuhan-A
No.538,Gongxiu Road,Xiaoshan District,
Wuhan,Hubei Province,China