Starting this year's effort we thought it was important to set some goals that would be implemented during the year. The goals that were set are the following:
- Educate the public about synthetic biology and its impact on society.
- Raising awareness about cancer, particularly breast cancer
The group organized various events and activities to achieve the above objectives.
CPRG (Cancer Prevention Group) Greece Webinar
We were introduced to the research group CPRGGreece that was interested in our project and the IGEM competition in general. The Cancer Prevention Research Group was founded in February 2021 (Greece, Athens) and was established as a free and internet-based research group. This Group aims at the scientific understanding, studying and informing the public of the factors, which play an important role in the increasing & reducing of cancer. From our collaboration, the team gained significant knowledge from a multidisciplinary pool of experts in the field. This has contributed to examining cancer and its effects from a variety of angles and factors it affects.
We saw this as a great opportunity to spread knowledge about iGEM and make it more popular in our region and with the group's audience. So we held a webinar, open to the general public, to which we invited renowned scientists in the field such as Dr. Matina Pagoni, Physician - Pathologist / Co-ordinator Director of the 3rd department of Pathology G. GENNIMATAS / President of the medical association of Athens - Piraeus Hospitals “EINAP” and Dr. George Patrinos, PhD Molecular Biologist - Geneticist, Professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Pharmacogenomics, University of Patras. In this webinar we gave a brief introduction to the competition and talked mainly about the general outlines of the team, the projects of previous years and this year's project as well as an overview of cancer. This year's project was of particular interest to CPRGG because of the team's involvement in cancer prevention and early diagnosis. We also talked about the role of kinases as well as the epidemiology symptoms, immunotherapies and prevention of melanoma. Through this initiative, the team had the chance to spread awareness about cancer to the general public.
Participation in the H.P.S.A. (Hellenic Pharmacy Student Association) Conference
On May 12, we declared participation as a team in the pan-Hellenic conference of the Pharmaceutical Students' Association of Greece - Σ.Φ.Φ.Ε (HPSA). This type of event is a special way to promote our project and our team to people in the scientific field, such as university professors, scientific collaborators, sponsors and students from many faculties. We were really surprised by the questions we were asked throughout the conference and the response we got from the other attendees. The promotion of our idea was realized thanks to the information brochures that we distributed to the world and the few minute presentations that we made at that time on powerpoint via a laptop. A questionnaire could not be missing from such an important event and that's why we decided to distribute a questionnaire to the public on the subject of synthetic biology, cancer and diseases in general, which we had made to test the public's knowledge for these specific branches of science and then inform them accordingly. We attended all three days of the conference, 12-14/04, thus showing our interest in properly informing the public about the project we are working on and our team.
BioSTEM-Educational tool
Believing that school students represent the future of the competition, iGEM patras has collaborated with Biostem, an educational platform with the purpose of providing students with laboratory skills via a hands-on approach. Part of this flourishing collaboration were two speeches towards an audience of young individuals of primary school age. The first speech was delivered to an audience of 50 High school students via live in person presentation while the second was delivered via live remote presentation. We introduced them in synthetic biology, analyzing key concepts of synbio, from a theoretical and practical perspective . We demonstrated how to isolate DNA from one's own epithelium cells for young students who visited us at our headquarters in Patras, Greece. Permission Weavers were signed from students, teachers, and parents for all the samples used on site, and the isolated DNA was discarded afterwards. We anticipate that this move will serve as a catalyst for their future growth as scientists.
Our team also accompanied the Biostem team via remote presentations at a number of seminars organized by various educational stakeholders and schools with the goal of educating high school students on synthetic biology and the iGEM Competition, as well as how they can participate in the Competition on a high school track. We also presented Project Hyperion and all of our past projects to the students during this process, and we solicited their opinions on each project and its potential real-world applications. The Seminar in Argos, Greece, and the online debate in the Researcher's Night, a nationwide project to teach children of all ages about biology, were two events that stood out to us for the significant participation of students.
Our most recent collaboration with the Biostem team entailed the development of a card board game for children of various ages to play while learning about various milestones in the History of Biology Discoveries.
Comic Book
We believe that the best way to learn is to have fun, especially when the goal is to capture the attention of children. Most of the time, science communication tends to be completely academic, leaving fun behind. This causes a lack of interest in a large number of people, especially the younger audience. Consequently, we decided to create a comic, aimed at children and teenagers, which turns information into a game. Our comic book was the second issue of a comic series that we established while competing in the iGEM Competition of 2022 with Project 'P.A.G.G.A.I.A' under the title ''Synthetic Biology Mischief,'' and which we continue to distribute to young students through our collaboration with the Biostem team. We believe that there are no age boundaries in science, especially when it comes to learning about health. We used several biological facts to captivate children's imaginations and enlighten them about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle as we presented the biology of cancer in a simple and entertaining way. This issue is titled ''A dream fight'', and it is expected to be distributed to various schools and students.
Our team diligently sought out and received guidance from experts in the field to ensure that our approach would not adversely affect the developing psychology of children. This was a critical step in our process, as the well-being and safety of children is of utmost importance to us. By taking these measures, we were able to confidently move forward with our approach, knowing that we were doing so in a responsible and ethical manner.
You can read both issues down below:
ISSUE 2 - A DREAM FIGHT
ENGLISH VERSION
INDONESIAN VERSION
GREEK VERSION
ISSUE 1 - SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY MISCHIEF
COLORING BOOK
ENGLISH VERSION
GREEK VERSION
TV show appearance
Another action to approach the public and make our concept of cancer diagnosis, prevention and treatment widely known, was to participate in Ant1's show "Health above all" where a live interview. Two members of our team and Professor George Patrinos – head of the Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Therapy laboratory of the University of Patras – informed the viewers about our team, our project and our goals this year. The specific episode of the show "Health above all" seemed to have a special resonance with the audience, noting high viewership rates
Here's a trimmed version of the episode mentioned along with subtitles:
Article in the university magazine
To promote the IGEM competition to young students of the University of Patras we published an article in the university's magazine. We noticed that while our university is very active in the competition, few of our fellow students knew about it, except for the close circle of participants. So we decided, using the resources given to us by the university, to inform students about the competition, our team, iGEM Patras, and its previous projects, as well as the idea behind this year's project. With this activity we hope to raise awareness of synthetic biology among young people and create a bright new generation of researchers and synthetic biologists, with the ultimate goal of solving future problems that plague our society.
UP FM 103.7 Interview
During our interview with UP FM 103.7 we had the opportunity to talk about our team, this year's project and the responsibilities of each team member. You can the full interview of the iGEM Patras 2023 team leader Christina Tsianava, and member of Human Practices iGEM Patras 2023 John Lataris, at our spotify podcast through the following link:https://open.spotify.com/show/6kWVhnOYgTYfa1OBaLdNEL