Safety
The biggest challenge we have is to make sure our project is safe. Currently, our promoter J23119 doesn’t require any type of induction which prevents the use of unsafe inducing medicine. In the future, we will also try to incorporate our genetic circuit into the genome of EcN. This prevents any plasmid leakage and makes our product safer. However, later down the line, testing on animals and possibly humans would inevitably be necessary, leads to ethical complications. To tackle this problem, we will try to cooperate with medicine firms and conduct these tests under government supervision. This wouldn’t be extremely difficult since Nissle 1917, our chassis, is already an approved bacteria for human trial.
Cost
If the product is proved effective and safe, we would also potentially have to refine the production process to cut cost so the price of the medicine would be reduced. Finally, we would have to market it in competition with all kinds of products used to relieve lactose intolerance that are already in the market. We believe our product has a head start, aiming to be effective in a long term, convenient, and cheap.
Benefits
People with lactose intolerance would be most directly benefited by our project. As mentioned, we envision our final product to be a medicinal pill that can relieve lactose intolerance for a month when taken. It is meant to be cheap and easily produced so it’s not only easy accessed by individuals, but also possibly purchased by NGOs in scale for redistribution (like how anti-diarrhetic medicine is distributed in sub-Saharan Africa). We also envisioned our use of CAP to inspire other IGEM teams to protect their own engineered bacteria strains, and safely and efficiently deliver bacteria that can produce clinically useful proteins and chemicals inside the intestine. Furthermore, CAP is also capable of, as other researchers have proven （our experimental results also proves the point）, protecting bacteria in human blood without causing severe immune reaction, which may help target and destroy tumors.
A picture of our freeze-dried bacteria and enteric-coated pills