The creation of a product that the world is in need of
Our iGEM journey started by examining a site where global problems are gathered and targeted for action, the sustainable development goals (SDG) from the United Nations (UN). Here we found the motivation for our project in the SDG 3.3 “By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTD) and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases”. From this we decided to do our part and singled out the underdiagnosed and undertreated disease Schistosomiasis fitting the two boldend statements in the SDG 3.3.While knowing that there was a general need for our project, how to aid in the eradication of Schistosomiasis was still unclear. Discussions with Schistosoma expert Fiona Flemming brought to light that, while the disease has a currently effective cure, diagnosis was rare and treatment was usually instead administered on a populationwide scale, leading to drug overuse, excessive costs and larger risks of resistances developing in the near future. Thereby our plan for the diagnostic tool development was set in stone and our two methods were thought up as a response.
How the world will receive our product
With schistosomiasis risking to affect around 700 million people, the small quantities of diagnostic kits we could produce ourselves is definitely far from enough. Therefore we contacted ICT diagnostics in southern Africa who offered to produce our finished product if it showed potential. This partnership would allow us to formulate a production contract, allowing them to enter production of our product, and also moving the production closer to the regions where it is needed, both reducing burdens of transportation and empowering local companies, moving away from a western dominated industry. This, however, came with Stricter product specifications, mainly forcing us to take a stricter look on how we could keep the price down of our diagnostic kit. This made the cell-based project more viable, but another specification was stability of the product at room temperature, which can’t be guaranteed with a living cell. We then looked into the possibility of drying it, similar to dried baker's yeast in stores, as a response to this criteria. For more information about the input we received, please visit implementation and read about it under the "Actual Implementation" section.What we do in the general fight against schistosomiasis
When working with a NGD, the neglected part is not to be underestimated. Whenever our team has been out presenting since our project was decided, we made an effort to inform as much as possible about the disease. While showing our commitment to this battle, we hope to inspire others to take it up as well.While inspiring, we do not just intend to get people working on their ways of improving the diagnostics. Schistosomiasis is a disease spread through human urine and faeces, passing through an intermediary snail host to infect humans again. There are multiple methods that can be implemented to reduce the spread without taking to synthetic biology. To help these methods get attention, we created a pamphlet, depicting these methods. For the sake of availability and ease of use, we took a Nordic, IKEA inspired approach making mostly everything depicted in illustrations instead of text. We produced this illustration to distribute in conjunction with use of our product.
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