Catalog

    Description

    Inspiration

    Figure 1:Some statistical data about acne

    We found many problems that could be solved with synthetic biology, and choosing our iGEM project was inspired by the fact that many members of our team developed acne vulgaris during adolescence, which caused great problems to our daily lives. Life and emotions affected by acne prompted the team to design a treatment plan to help with the quality of life of adolescents around us and in other areas. We believe that we can use microbes to solve the problems in our lives. And, with the thought patterns and tools given to us by synthetic biology, we can contribute to creating a new field of research with unparalleled potential.

    At present, acne is one of the most common skin diseases in the world, affecting the lives of the general people, among which adolescence is the highest age group of acne. Adolescence is a very special stage of life, when students often feel upset and tired from skin problems caused by physical changes and hormonal production. With the increase of skin problems such as acne, adolescent adolescents often feel frustrated and low self-esteem, which brings great difficulties in their learning and social interaction.

    Therefore, we want to provide teenagers with new medical products to reduce acne problems. The application of engineered bacteria to the production of antimicrobial peptides can provide safer and more effective treatments for teenagers, further helping them to improve their skin problems and get rid of the negative effects of acne. Such a program would be very popular with adolescent parents and students because it meets their expectations and needs for health and beauty. At the same time, the impact of the project on society, market and other aspects will not be ignored.

    For details, please click on the Human Practice

    Question

    Acne is caused by specific types of bacteria that multiply in the skin, leading to skin inflammation and the formation of acne. Although existing treatments can alleviate the disease, there are still problems such as drug resistance and side effects, so it is urgent to find more effective and side-free therapies.

    Figure 2:Treatment methods for acne and the corresponding defects

    Solution

    Given that antimicrobial peptides have a broad spectrum of bactericidal effects, unlike antibiotics, the bactericidal effect of antimicrobial peptides depends on the destruction of bacteria by the pores they form, so they are not susceptible to drug resistance. Therefore, we plan to engineer an engineered bacterium that uses its synthetic antimicrobial peptides to combat specific types of bacteria caused by acne. We plan to achieve targeted removal of pathogens by using engineered bacteria on the skin and designing a specific release and mechanism of action, which will provide new ideas and solutions for the treatment of acne.

    Please click on Design for more details

    Figure 3:A Schematic representation of the specificity

    Since our project will be applied to the human surface in the future, in order to ensure human safety and not pollute the environment, we have designed rigorous safety guarantee measures to prevent the leakage of engineering bacteria.

    Please click on Safety for more details


    Figure 4:Schematic diagram of the environmental safety design



    Figure 5:Schematic diagram of the human safety design


    Our design is not only limited to the laboratory, in response to "production", make scientific and technological achievements out of the "laboratory", "application" field "," out "the new kinetic energy", we from the rights and interests of the product, price, function consider product strategy, build a complete set of product strategy closed loop, make our products commercialization, which can solve the problem of acne.

    Please click on entrepreneurship for more details




    Figure 6:Design diagram of "Application and Sales Plan"


    At the same time, the commercialization and productization also need to consider the cost, production and other issues. We plan to build a hardware that can automatically cultivate our engineering bacteria. We imagine our hardware products mainly based on modern biotechnology and automation control concept, aims to provide an efficient, accurate, safe, easy to use, cheap microbial culture equipment, to provide users with an efficient, intelligent, fast, healthy culture environment, to provide users with one-stop microbial culture services, meet the needs of different users. We call it a multi-functional microbial automatic incubator, is a set of intelligent culture, environmental monitoring, automatic control, intelligent interaction and other functions in one of the intelligent hardware products.

    At the same time, it can also connect with users' mobile phones, computers and other devices through intelligent cloud connection. This instrument can grow our engineered bacteria and sell the instrument to grow other bacteria.

    Please click on hardware for more details

    Figure 7:Hardware design diagram

    At the same time, we plan to build a communication platform for skin acne, which aims to make patients have a better understanding of the disease. In the early stage, we will contact with wet experiment to create a popular science platform to accumulate users. In the later stage, after passing product certification and clinical verification, we will promote our products through this website.

    Please click on software for more details


    Figure 8:Schematic diagram of the skin communication website design