Rural Healthcare Resource Survey

Taiwan is renowned for its well-established and convenient healthcare system, yet there is an unequal distribution of healthcare resources between rural and urban areas. One of the aims of our project, Vigilaguard, is to minimize the gap by enhancing medical accessibility in rural populations. To assess the performance of our product and further understand its potential influences, we conducted a survey with respondents aged 19 to 81, who were all rural citizens living in Zhiben, Taitung County. We asked them what the first thing they pay attention to about the bio-device, as well as their acceptance of our product.

Regarding medical resources, younger people tend to find it inconvenient, with insufficient resources and inadequate equipment. Although there is a clinic nearby, test samples must be transferred to city-center hospitals before acquiring diagnostic results. Younger people may compare this situation with that in urban areas, so they feel it is inconvenient. On the other hand, older people find it satisfactory because they are accustomed to having a regular follow-up routine. Once the habit is built, no matter how long it takes to go to the medical institutions that they are familiar with, they think it is acceptable.

As for the acceptance of our product, younger people are willing to try it and believe that it can improve the insufficient medical resources in rural areas to some extent. This opinion stemmed from their reluctance to visit medical facilities, their desire to avoid taking time off work for appointments, and their preference for not disclosing intimate medical conditions directly to doctors. Therefore, they consider our product to be convenient and useful for them. However, price will be a crucial factor to consider. On the other hand, older people believe that consulting with a doctor is their preferred method, so they are more conservative towards our product. They also think that they may have difficulties operating and using it.

By conducting this survey, we reflected on how our project could be better implemented in society and decided to incorporate additional features so as to meet public preferences. On-site clinical measurement with the assistance of medical personnel could effectively save time spent on sample transportation. __We also recognize the importance of seeking support from medical professionals, so our product can be verified for clinical usage and gain the trust of potential customers. Additionally, modifying the build-up of our design to make it more cost-effective could increase the availability of Vigilaguard to a wider audience. By making these adjustments, our project can make an impact and satisfy the medical demand for younger people in rural areas. With the help of a manual attached to our product and local medical personnel, we can expand the influence to a wider age range. We believe our product will be useful for those people who cannot receive sufficient medical resources.

Bio Asia Taiwan Exhibition

In the early stage of our project, during the experiment design period, we encountered a few questions about our plans and design. In order to find out the solution to these problems, we visited the Bio Asia Taiwan Exhibition, to interview the experts and the researchers from industry and biotechnology companies to get some useful ideas or better solutions to our questions.

Bio Asia Taiwan is an annual exhibition, which is held by the global Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and the Taiwan Bio Industry Organization (Taiwan BIO). The exhibition primarily focuses on “innovation, market and supply, and investment” in precision health and biopharma Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) operations.

With the questions on choosing biomarkers, some experts suggested that we can choose a disease or a symptom first. After that, there are two methods, searching the related research paper, or directly getting a patient's specimen like blood or saliva and detecting the amount of the biomarker in it. After we find the biomarker, we will have to understand the properties of the biomarker, such as the detection method, the amplitude of concentration changes, or its detection efficiency. It's possible to have more than one biomarker in the project. Giving the advice of selecting diseases, a biotechnology company's researcher tells us that we can choose widespread diseases such as diabetes, or diseases that have no easier detection method.

Besides, we visited lots of companies and access to the sellers, technical staff, and experts on their stall. One of the companies chose "diabetes" as their target disease, and found a biomarker that can detect it in an earlier disease phase. Another company chose “triple negative breast cancer", which can only be diagnosed by surgical section and has many interference factors. Thus, they drew the patient's blood and measured each molecule's concentrations. The other company chose “oral cancer” as the target disease. They have searched lots of papers and found out several possible biomarkers. After the pretest of the biomarkers, they filtered out 3 different protein biomarkers. To sum up, after choosing a certain disease, we would have to search papers, understand the properties, and do lots of tests to ensure this biomarker is what we want.

The next question is sending our constructed E. coli into the human body. A technical staff in a biotechnology company said that there is currently a law that limits the bacteria strain in probiotic foods. So, it is possible for us to construct our target gene on the legal bacteria strain. For example, B. bifidum and B. coagulans are legal strains of probiotics. If using E. coli as the main species, it might be able to use E. coli Nissle 1917 as the engineered strain. Nissle 1917 is a strain that wouldn’t release endotoxic so that it is recognized as a probiotic. The current trend of making probiotics is making them or their products into powder and packaging them into a capsule with biotechnology company’s exclusive technology. As the production of probiotics food, it might encounter other problems in preservation of the food, or the prevention of the destruction of stomach acid. One technical staff told us that in their company, they have added a molecule that can prevent probiotics or products from the destruction of ice crystals due to quick frost and defrost in preservation. To overcome the challenge of stomach acid, the common method is to put the products into a capsule which has acidic resistance.

After visiting the exhibition, we received lots of feedback on our projects and our questions. In conclusion, we came up with the solution of the problem we encountered, and also got the advanced advice and ideas for our team project design.

Dr. Hsu, Chun-Fei

In the beginning of testing our device, our dry lab encountered several problems. Firstly, our light source isn’t applicable for our device. Secondly, our servo motor isn’t working. In order to find out the solution for these problems. We consulted with an expert in this field, Dr. Hsu, Chun-Fei. He gave us very helpful advice. He thought it is because our servo motor cannot be compatible with the program code. The pin output voltage is less than 5V, which is the minimum voltage to drive the motor. For the problems of light source, he recommended using LED light strips like those in aquariums to create parallel light. By doing so, we can make the light intensity which excites each fluorescent protein the same. The discussion with Dr. Hsu, Chun-Fei really provide us with a clear way to improve our device. With the modifications, the experimental results which are measured by our device will be more trustworthy.

Dr. Liu, Ta-Chung

Dr. Liu Ta-Chung is the professor of the department of biomedical engineering in our school. With the strong connection between us and his profession in electrochemistry, he helped us deal with lots of problems regarding the EET device. From choosing the electrode material to evaluating the pros and cons of several measurement methods of electronic signals, he provided us with comprehensive explanations and persuasive opinions. After this meetup, we still get in touch with him to obtain more in-depth instruction.

NYCU-Taipei 17th Anniversary Concert

NYCU-Taipei (formerly NYMU-Taipei) was established in 2007 as Taiwan's first international synthetic biology team. Over the past 17 years, we have participated in iGEM every year. In the past 16 years, our team has collectively won twelve World Gold Medals, two Silver Medals, two Bronze Medals, the World Championship in the Environmental track, ranking sixth globally, and third in Asia, along with numerous other international competition awards!

All these achievements have come through the hard work and dedication of our beloved Professor Chuan-Hsiung Chang, who left us earlier this year. Over the years, Professor Chang has inspired countless students with his passion for research.

To commemorate our dearest Professor Chang, we organized the NYCU-Taipei iGEM 17th Anniversary Celebration. Through musical performances, we showcased our spirit and determination in honor of Professor Chang in heaven. We also invited alumni from each of the past 16 teams and teachers who have supported and helped our team over the years to join us in this grand event. They shared their support and encouragement with our current team, ensuring that Professor Chang's spirit and passion continue to inspire us.

We remember his contribution to this team for the past 16 years and hope he R.I.P.

Dr. Li, Shiue-Lin

In our project, we co-transform MtrCAB and ccmA-H plasmids into E.coli to construct our EET(extracellular electron transfer) system. We built up a simple device including a three-electrode system and cyclic voltammetry to test the current intensity. In this part, we encountered a lot of difficulties. For example, we were wondering how long the current went up during EET. Due to the lack of experience, we decided to consult with Dr. Li, Shiue-Lin from Tunghai University. He is an expert in electromicrobiology and electrochemistry in Taiwan.

We really appreciated that he was willing to accept our invitation. Our team member went to Tunghai University in Taichung to consult with him in person. He gave us a lot of advice regarding device construction. We were originally bothered by the problem of keeping anaerobic conditions in the chamber and the long time for the current to go up. He told us that we could change our chamber to a really small one called CoverWell Perfusion Chamber. It could easily be kept in anaerobic conditions due to the really small space of the chamber. Moreover, he said that the key point of improving the efficiency of EET is to shorten the distance between the bacteria and the electrodes. Therefore, the best way to do is to shrink the space to make the engineered E.coli easily bind on the three electrodes.

Moreover, he disabused us of the misunderstanding between ferric ion reduction and cyclic voltammetry. We originally thought that we should add extra ferric ions into the chamber to be reduced by accepting electrons. Then we could monitor the change of oxidation-reduction of Fe ions by cyclic voltammetry and transfer it into electrical signals. However, he thought that it was not necessary to do that. We just needed to ensure the electrons transferred outside the membrane could be accepted by our electrodes then deliver the signal to cyclic voltammetry. We don’t need to monitor the oxidation-reduction of any metal ions if we just want to check the current intensity.

Dr. Li, Shiue-Lin also led us to his laboratory and showed us his previous study and device about EET. He generously gave us a part of materials he used to build the device before. We genuinely thanked him for his great help. He is such a kind-hearted and generous professor. Thanks to him, we learned so much precious advice regarding our EET device design and took our project a big stride forward.