Humans are facing many problems these days, our team chose three problems to give out a solution. Nowadays, plastic is widely used in many fields as useful material, however, there is an inevitable defect of plastic---it is nondegradable. Another problem we are facing is drug resistance, with the growth of medicine use, drug resistance becomes a serious problem. The third problem is the inconvenient aqueous two-phase separation system.
As a part of the human race, our team is obliged to solve those problems and vigorously fight against environmental pollution, drug resistance, and flawed biological technology.
As for the first problem, critical environmental issues like plastic pollution may cost a community much time and effort to ameliorate. Therefore our end customers should not be limited to the lab and high environmental demand; our target customers are the local plants and organizations that process materials regularly. We are dedicated to making our two methods into reality, putting our theory into practice, and creating a product that serves as an outstanding alternative for other environmentally destructive approaches. Our team envisions that people can bio-decompose PET (the majority in the plastic waste) easily and effectively with our fusion protein and whole-cell biocatalyst of mLCC universally.
And the second problem is related to antibiotic abuse. Because of the growth of using antibiotics, the number of super-resilient bacteria is getting larger and larger. Many ways are possible to solve it. Using antimicrobial peptides is one of those. The antimicrobial peptide has antibacterial activity, and it has a low chance to render resistance, has good biocompatibility, and has fast sterilization. Thus, it has great promise. Not only that, but our team also combined BslA with LL37, which is a kind of antimicrobial peptide. This fairly improves its function. This fusion protein tends to serve pharmaceutical factories and hospitals as end users because we are dedicated to allowing improved antimicrobials to help antibiotics deal with disease and mitigation of drug resistance. We expect that this kind of antimicrobial peptide will bring value to the biomedical field.
The last problem is about Aqueous two-phase separation (ATPS). ATPS is a kind of technique that is mostly used in synthetic biology for protein separation and purification. The traditional ATPS uses fungal hydrophobins such as HFBI and HFBII. However, the traditional method is costly and it is also not efficient enough because it requires a long separation time. However, our team is trying to improve it by incorporating a continuous-flow system and replacing fungal hydrophobins with BslA. Both BslA and the two-phase system have potential, and have a chance to get greater improvement in protein separation and purification. So, we are more inclined that biotechnology companies or universities as this improved technology’s end users. Our team envisions that this can bring more possibilities to the field of protein purification-increase the efficiency and lower cost.
We sought professional help from a company, Bluepha Microbiological Technology. Through the great conversation, we learned about the development and use of synthetic biology, and understand the prospects of synthetic biology applications in more detail. Also, we gained suggestions for our project that there is a possibility to fuse BslA with more protein in order to reach more application fields. We are motivated and inspired by this interview.
Besides, we visited SinoCellTech Engineering. They listened patiently to our anxieties and motivated us with their own experiences. We got the momentum to break through the bottleneck and move forward.
Also, with the help of YICON Medical Technology, we broke through difficulties in molecular cloning. We learned a lot and received new ways of thinking when facing issues.
Despite the promising prospects of our product, it may have potential hazards. We create our products from biomaterials, and there is a risk that E.coli carry the antibiotic resistance gene may spread the genome in the environment, causing the proliferation of antibiotic resistance genes and granting bacteria resistance. Because of the increasing awareness of public for biosafety, we are tending to find solution to deal with it. Currently, we have to conduct our experiment with transgenic technology. Transgenic technology may risk damaging the environment, subsequently threatening people's health, granting plants drug resistance, and contaminating animals' inhabitants.
Besides, part of our products is used in the human body, so we need to make sure that it has biocompatibility and is not toxic. So, we also need to pass the process of testing its compatibility with the human body which CFDA provides.
Right now, our challenge is to make our product the most tenacious vitality it can and overcome the potential difficulties we might encounter in the foreseeable future. For instance, Pilot Scale Production, the process of scale-up research using conditions consistent with production in pilot production, is a vital link that transforms scientific and technological achievements into productivity. Also, the new type of antimicrobial peptide has an unsure long-term effect. Because antibiotics have been used for about one hundred years since penicillin was discovered in 1929, which means it has enough accumulation and enough experience. Hospitals are confident to give out antibiotics and exactly know their efficiency. However, the antimicrobial peptides have been discovered within 50 years, so it will be hard and will take a period of time to attain large-scale production and application. But whether our ideas can be practical enough is still uncertain. However, there is no doubt that our approach indeed has a promising and bright future. Our teams are devoted to eliminate all the barriers ahead of us and make contribution.
