- Overview
- Integrated Human Practices
- Entrepreneur
- Education
Entrepreneurship
In this section, we conducted our activities for two main reasons :
1) participation and research funding support, and 2) market validation and potential.
UIncheon is currently participating in a total of three competitions, receiving test-bed support of 3 million KRW and an encouragement award. Additionally, through the support program, we have successfully registered two patents related to the co-culture bio-containment system in South Korea.
Participation & Research Funding Support
One of the most significant benefits of participating in iGEM is the opportunity for students to form their own teams and develop their research topics over the course of a year. However, this is contingent upon having adequate infrastructure and financial support. If there is insufficient financial support and inadequate infrastructure, it can impose constraints in various aspects.
While South Korea has a high undergraduate completion rate of 70%, the number of undergraduates directly involved in research and projects is quite low. There are multiple reasons for this, but one of the major factors is the lack of sufficient research support for students.
Therefore, last year and this year, we took on the challenge of participating in programs supporting young startups and supplemented our research and operational expenses through cash prizes and grants.
In Songdo, Incheon, there are various departments supporting startups, and numerous projects are actively underway. We participated in various programs offered by Incheon National University's Startup Support Team, receiving support from various angles.
Market Entry & Validation
Throughout our journey, participating in various entrepreneurship idea competitions and startup support programs, our activities were not limited to covering participation costs. We also dedicated valuable time to validate our product's market viability and explore its potential for market entry.
Meeting with various mentors and judges, we identified several markets where our technology could be applied and are determined to showcase our capabilities in those areas.
- Bio-accumulation with GMO in wastewater treatment system
- Cell therapy targeting microbiome
- Pretreatment of complex media
GMOs, especially GMO yeast, are extensively studied as biological alternatives to chemical reagents for removing organic substances and contaminants from wastewater. To ensure their safe application, a system has been developed to terminate all GMOs in the sludge upon exposure to the external environment.
This innovation could be a significant step in incorporating GMOs into wastewater treatment. Ideally, GMO yeast would sense a high concentration of a specific microbial molecule upon introduction to the activated sludge tank, keeping them alive. However, as they are released into the external environment, the decreasing concentration of the trigger molecule would trigger programmed cell death in the GMOs.
GMOs operate within microbiomes and may be externally released via excretion or host cell death. They must stay viable within the body but be terminated upon separation. During expert meetings, we've identified concerns among doctors regarding antibiotic resistance when using GMOs. However, our bio-containment system seems to provide a safer alternative by eliminating the need for antibiotics.
In the bio-industry, using complex media such as molass is beneficial for price competitiveness, as such media does not have marketability by itself. Since these media usually contain unpreferred molecules such as polysaccharides and pathogenic sources, the complex media must be degraded and removed before the main culturing step.
According to the convention, the pretreatment is preceded before the main culture. However, these two steps could be integrated with co-culturing and manipulating the population of each strain with each certain role.