Scientific dissemination is essential to approach cutting-edge knowledge to students, children and curious people from all backgrounds. When talking about biomedical research, it becomes even more relevant. New discoveries in how diseases occur, what we can do to prevent them and new potential treatments are extremely valuable information for those who are suffering from illnesses of all kinds.
In the last decades, we have witnessed hundreds of incurable diseases become curable. When talking about cancer, millions of lives have been saved using chemo and radiotherapy. Although effective, their high toxicity and numerous side effects evidenced the need for other therapies. Targeted therapies are the new paradigm of cancer treatment. They combine lower toxicity and higher effectiveness and they improve the prognosis and quality of life of patients. The main goal at the moment is to keep narrowing the target to make them as specific as possible.
Our project presents a new potential targeted therapy for Burkitt’s Lymphoma. This opens a question to us: how have targeted therapies changed the way cancer is treated? We want to know the impact an idea like ours would have in cancer treatment. To do so, we have tried to educate ourselves on how existing targeted therapies have changed the jobs or the life of different people.
With the goal of communicating and disseminating the knowledge obtained, we have created a podcast. It’s not only about science, it is about economy, legal regulations, communication and ways of living. Every episode is an interview with someone who has a highly valuable point of view: a patient, an haematologist, a psycho-oncologist, an economist, a GMO expert and another iGEM team (Munich). This way, we have been able to estimate the impact our project would have if it could be developed as a new form of treatment.
All these interviews have helped us to understand the relevance of our work. They have opened up new frontiers and helped us to outline many points, such as the proposed implementation (potential applications and end users), market analysis, scientific interest and the SWOTs of the project.
Our posts as a human practice:
It is undeniable the power that social networks have taken in recent years. Their presence has taken value in many areas of our lives, from communication to marketing. That is why we believe they are a very powerful weapon if you know how to use them.
In our case, we wanted to use our instagram account (@igemubarcelona) as a learning platform. Each week we have uploaded scientific news of interest for the iGEM community, which are also related to our project Vesiprod. Not only are they recent news, but it is also a very easy way to keep up to date with the latest advances in synthetic biology.
In addition, we wanted to complement these news with a brief explanation of the synthetic biology technique or technology to which they referred. This way, iGEM teams can refresh their knowledge and even learn something new, while our non-scientific audience receives simple explanations of factual information based on contrasted bibliography.
Our Twitter account was used to highlight news or new scientific discoveries on the field of lymphoma research:
