Communication with the Chinese University of Hong Kong

In Slack, we contacted the Chinese university of Hong Kong, They focus on Antigen - -based Tumor Recognizing Universal System. Antigen-based Tumor Recognizing Universal System (ATREUS) utilizes recombinant AAV vector to deliver a novel antigen to tumor cells as tag, then CAR-T cells targeting the novel antigen would be engineered. The expression of transgene is expected to be confined to tumor cells by incorporation of tumor-specific promoters, while CAR-T infiltration and antigen presentation would be improved by the addition of miRNAs. It is hoped that the system would develop into a precision medicine for patients of different tumortypes considering the customizable nature of different components in the system. Because of the similarities in content, we soon reached an intention of cooperation and agreed to an online meeting to introduce the projects of both sides.

After the presentation, both sides asked questions and comments about each other's projects. They were very interested in our mathematical model, and carried out in-depth study, communication and exploration.They invited Professor Jingying Zhou from the Chinese University of Hong Kong to evaluate our project.

Professor evaluation

We tell the story of our project for professor zhou, professor zhou first give a lot of affirmation to our project, she thinks we project the whole process is relatively perfect, cell experiment and mathematical modeling are also very persuasive, but at the same time, it puts forward a few problems, the comparsion of CAR-T cells and CAR-NK cells should be stressed enough.

In addition to the CRS and GHVD, CAR-T cells are also short of their short half-life, which leads to apoptosis after a short period of time after injection into human body. However, we can effectively control the life span of NK cells by using suicide gene to control apoptosis, so as to play a better killing effect. It is hoped that we will mention this in the presentation later and highlight the control role of common NK-92 cells in the introduction of wet experiments. In addition, she also reminded us of the safety of using NK-92 cells. The source of NK-92 cancer cells determines the possibility of its infinite proliferation, but the safety risks of injecting NK-92 cells into the body also need to be carefully considered. We thought a lot about this and reflected it in the Safety section.

Help with publicity

We introduced our modeling section in plain language, and with the help of the Hong Kong team, we promoted the project to a wider scope. At the same time, we also help them to enrich their propaganda and education content，so that more people can see our project and idea and pay attention to cell therapy and Synthetic biology.

Academic communication conference

From September 10th to 11th, we participated in the academic exchange activities organized by WorldShaper-Shanghai and WorldShaper-HZBiox. At the meeting, we introduced the inspiration source of Whac A Mole, project introduction and modeling, and Human Practice After the explanation, Professor Wu Jiequn from Zhejiang University of Technology made comments on our project. He believed that our project had a novel idea, and the whole project had a clear context, which was mature and perfect.

But it also needed to think about how to highlight the point in a short presentation, how to explain to the listener the relatively difficult part of the mathematical modeling work, and how to further reflect the team's efforts to address the social difficulty of cancer. We listened carefully about professor's opinions and suggestions, and improve the mathematical modeling part of the explanation and other parts of the content.