Overview

Cardiovascular diseases have become an important threat to the health of the population nowadays. TMAO (trimethylamine oxide) has been shown to have a significant association with cardiovascular disease. TMAO is mainly derived from a poor diet through the metabolism of TMAO by intestinal microorganisms and then oxidized by the liver.

Our engineered bacterium has been proven to work effectively in the wet lab, and we also hope that it can be widely used in the market. Therefore, we have designed the relevant complementary equipment, including hardware and software. Science is not a star shining in a distant sky, but an everyday product shared by everyone. We hope that through the hardware, "i-Box", users can know the health condition in real time by drawing blood, "APP", can monitor and control the hardware, making the product more intelligent, and the engineered bacteria will be processed and encapsulated to form pills, matching theophylline for daily use, users will be able to adjust the amount of theophylline taken according to the feedback from the hardware to achieve more accurate medical treatment.

Design

"i-Box"

The "i-Box" includes a blood collection module and a trimethylamine oxide detection module. The user can use the blood collection device to collect blood in real time, and put the blood sample into our TMAO detection module to quantify the concentration of TMAO in real time. Our "i-Box" use the colorimetric reaction and color recognition device in the hardware to quantify the concentration initially to help the user determine his or her health status and give a treatment diagnosis in our "APP". The "APP" provides a diagnosis of the treatment and the recommended dose of our products, enabling real-time monitoring of the treatment.

For more details, please click the following link Hardware.

"APP"

The "APP" brings the user closer to our project, it is connected to the "box" via Bluetooth, our "APP" can control the refill of the hardware to refill the reaction solution and analyze and feedback the color information It provides intelligent notifications and usage information. In the information age, the "APP" will certainly cater to the needs of our time, filling the gap of bilateral interaction and making our product a complete system.

For more details, please click the following link Software.

Safety of Implementation

We take the safety of our products very seriously. For the chassis, we use E. coli DH5α and BL21 (DE3) for gene cloning and expression, but these strains are not normally used in everyday products. Considering the practical application of this project, we chose to use a widely recognized probiotic, E. coli Nissile 1917, for our chassis that will not cause harm to humans or the environment. In addition, we carefully designed the circuit with a temperature-based suicide scheme. Once the surrounding temperature drops, the suicide switch will be activated. In our project, the normal temperature of the working environment is around 37℃. So the suicide scheme can avoid the accidental leakage of the bacteria. When the bacteria leave the normal working condition, the temperature in the surrounding will drop; Therefore, the suicide switch will be activated and the toxin will be expressed.

Usage Process

Users can use our "i-Box" to take blood in real time to determine their health status and take the right amount of our pills with theophylline, based on the treatment diagnosis given in the "APP" and the recommended dosage of our products. If you do not take theophylline, you can also achieve a beneficial effect and relief.

Product Positioning

Our main target users are patients with cardiovascular disease, and according to our HP's pre-survey, the main population is focused on the middle-aged and elderly. We hope that our engineered bacteria will provide a variety of autonomous treatment options for patients with cardiovascular disease. By introducing theophylline, we hope that patients will combine theophylline with probiotics to achieve the effect of real-time monitoring of precision medicine through patient self-regulation of theophylline dosing. Cost-effective as our products are, we successfully combined a multitude of functions in one bacterium, via the application of synthetic biology. Meanwhile, there is no need of special training before using the product, making it an user-friendly product when put into the market.

Reflection and Challenge

Although our engineered bacteria have been shown to be effective in the wet lab, from a design point of view, the therapeutic efficacy of the “therapeutic module” is the main consideration. This year we tried to reduce the concentration of TMA from both degradation and inhibition perspectives, which may provide better therapeutic efficacy. However, the availability of our engineered bacteria for clinical use and their druggability need to be further explored. In addition, whether it performs better in a market with many types of probiotics competing in the market and whether it can be widely used in the market is still being explored.