What is colorectal cancer?

Colorectal cancer is the combined classification of colon cancer and rectal cancer, and is the third most common type of cancer worldwide for both men and women and one of the leading causes of deaths related to cancer. Current methods of treatment include surgery, chemotherapy, and radiationtherapy, all three of which are either invasive or non-specific, resulting in a decreased quality of life during and following treatment.

3 rd

Most Common Cancer Worlwide

< 64 %

Overall Survival Rate est.

1931590

Cases in 2020

Our Project

Colorectal cancer is one of the most invasive and lethal types of cancer, our team strives to innovate and add to the current available treatment tools. Our project aims develop the basic aspects of a biosensor capable of administering a localized treatment while maintaining biosafety via a kill-switch. While we do not aim to completely develop the sensor from the ground up, as a proof of concept, we want to set a basis on which future reaserch can be conducted and prove that such a biosensor will be key to the development of future cancer treatment.

EAT

SHOOT

LEAVE

EAT

Yes, it’s what you think…

It refers to the intake of the pill by the patient and the detection of the targeted biomarker beyond a certain threshold. After the patient ingests the pill, the contained bacteria will make its way to the gut and will respond to higher biomarket concentrations which is a characteristic of CRC tumor cells.

Hence, it’s a dose-dependent response triggering the SHOOT phase.

SHOOT

It’s an interplay between the wild-type and the mutant hexokinase. The mutant contends with the wild-type for dimerization. This quenching stimulates an increased expression of the wild-type by the disease-specific biomarker that is strongly correlated to its concentration.

Outnumbered, the mutant hexokinase can no longer appease the wild-type dimerization. The wild-type dimer hexokinase then transduces signals to the secondary messenger that expresses fluorescent proteins as a response.

Split T7 RNA Polymerase is connected to this circuit as an AND gate to enhance its specificity. It permits the circuit to express reporters only when the disease-specific biomarkers exceed the threshold imposed by the mutant hexokinase.

LEAVE

The beginning of the end…

The bacteria have completed their job and have maneuvered through the patient’s body. To protect the environment from any unintended consequences, we have included a temperature-dependent ribosomal kill switch in the bacteria which activates when the temperature is lower than 37°C.

OUR VISION

We strive to lay the foundation for future research to be conducted on concentration dependent systems integrated for cancer treatment and want to encourage all new treatment tools to include biocontainment systems such as our kill switch.

While this proof of concept is intended as a stepping stone we strongly believe that this is a step in the right direction for innovative treatment...

More about our project?

Project Description

Implementation

Project Modeling

Safety

Education

Team

Human Practices

Our Team

Elias Maris

Wet Lab Responsible

Pharmacy student specilizing in drug development

Christopher Yap

Finance Team Leader

His goal is to bridge the gap between science and business.

Luka Van den Berghe

Team Leader

She graduated as a biochemical engineer and currently pursuing a master in biophysics, biochemistry and biotechnology.

Lennert Van Bergen

Wet Lab Member

He is currently pursuing a master in chemistry.