Overview
This year our team was concerned about the widespread myopia problem among school students and decided to use synthetic biology to find a solution. Through scientific papers and interviews, we noticed that the main causes of eye damage are oxidative damage and blue light irritations. However, anthocyanins, as natural products in plants, shows resistant to both oxidative damage and blue light, has been already widely used in the cosmetics industry and health care products additives. Therefore, our project endowing bacteria with the ability to produce anthocyanins by constructing anthocyanin synthesis pathway in E.coli, so as to produce anthocyanins in an environmentally friendly, efficient and specialized manner.
In the proposed implementation, we consider the big picture in three facets.
1. Future Lab Work
According to our experimental results, we have made significant progress in lab experiments. Based on our knowledge from literature reviews and expert interviews, we learned there are further lab tests that must be carried out before the substance we make can become a product used by downstream factories. We have experimented with a few conditions, including express temperature, duration, and iPTG concentration, but we are aware, especially from the interview with Dr. Zhu from Zeno Biotech, that our product yield is still very low. Further explorations of optimization can explore similar enzymes from different species, different expression vectors and chassis, such as yeast. With a successful production of anthocyanin, or specifically, the delphinidin, we will need to consider how to purify it from the bacteria culture. We anticipate that more Human Practices interviews and visits might be helpful, and in fact needed in this stage to connect with factories. HP interviews also alerted us that even for safety substance like anthocyanin, cell toxicity tests and verifications for working dosage are still important data needed for safety concerns. Those will also be planned.
2. Applications and Products
We are thinking about how to combine our projects with eye care products. We suppose our products can not only be applied to staining some existing eye products, it can also be used independently to protect eyesight. Therefore, we propose the following two applications for this project:
1. Staining for existing eye products
In recent years, many young people like to wear contact lenses, which are lenses that are only slightly larger than our pupils and directly fit to the cornea. Nowadays more popular color contact lenses (commonly known as cosmetic contact lenses) also attract many attention, when wearing this kind of lens close to the cornea, they will not affect the external appearance, but also increase the brightness of the eyes and change the color of the pupil, to achieve the beauty effect, which is very popular with women.
During a brainstorming, our team members suggested that we could add an eyesight protection function to contact lenses, because the anthocyanins produced by our project have beautiful colors which are blue or purple, and so it shows effectively resistant to blue light and can be made into anti-blue light products.
We felt excited to this idea and decided to make anthocyanins-used for contact lenses. Firstly, anthocyanin itself is a water-soluble pigment that can be easily stained for colourless contact lenses, resulting in the very popular blue or purple colored cosmetic contact lenses. We can also obtain cosmetic contact lenses of different shades by adjusting the duration of the dye to meet the needs of different people. Secondly, cosmetic contact lenses stained by anthocyanins can be resistant to both oxidative damage and blue light, thus becoming a product with both aesthetic and eyesight protection functions.
In our interview with Dante, we learned that in addition to the use of daily eye wash and eye care, commonly used and sold products include eye protection patches made of Feiyan herb. In daily life our eye pressure is increasing, people are looking for a simple and easy but effective product, Chinese medicine commonly used smoking, moxibustion, external compresses, etc., Erfei Yan herb vegetarian eye patch is a kind of external compress, eye patch is a safer, more comfortable way to protect the eye.
According to the "China Eye Patch Industry Status Quo In-depth Research and Development Prospect Forecast Report (2022-2029)" released by the Guanyan Report Network, during the epidemic in 2020, students' online classes reached 8 hours per day; Per capita daily mobile phone for more than 10 hours; Patients with mobile phone eye syndrome reach 87%. At present, China's existing mobile phone Internet users exceed 1.02 billion, and the average daily time on mobile phones and computers takes 170 minutes and 161 minutes, respectively. In the above context, the visual fatigue of Chinese residents is relatively common, and show a high incidence and young age trend. Data show that the number of myopia patients in China is as high as more than 600 million. Among them, the overall myopia rate of adolescents in China is especially high.
In addition to visual patients, other eye diseases are also becoming increasingly serious. Relevant data show that, according to preliminary estimates.China is one of the countries with the largest number of blind and visually impaired patients in the world.
It can be seen that the eye health problem has caused the demand for ophthalmic medical services continues to increase. Relevant information shows that the eye protection market in 2019 currently reaches a scale of 170 billion, and maintains a compound annual growth rate of 20%. In 2021, the market size has exceeded 200 billion.
With the continuous expansion of the eye care market, eye care products are gradually enriched, ranging from internal use to external use, from traditional food to technological blessings. The eye patch is one of the eye care products.
According to the existing social situation and market demand, we contacted Good Vision Company through Dante teacher, who has many years of experience in the research and development of Feiyan Grass Plain Eye Patch, and developed the Feiyan Grass Plain Eye Patch Product, which has been welcomed by the market.
Furthermore, we plan to extend this approach to more products. Blue light is largely existing in computer monitors, fluorescent lights, mobile phones, digital products, and so on. This kind of blue light increases the amount of toxins in the macular region of the eye, which seriously threatens our eyesight. If we can carry out anthocyanin staining on mobile phone protective film and other electronic product protective film, this staining will not change the permeability of the film, and can also significantly reduce blue light damage.
We are confident to publicize our products, we will rely on its good appearance and function to protect more people's eyesight.
2. Independent for visual protection
Anthocyanin itself is a pure natural substance that is harmless to the human body, and even has benefits such as relieving blurred vision, eye distension, fear of light, and dry eyes. At present, anthocyanins have been added to many cosmetics and health products on the market, which means in principle it is safe for customer use. However, due to the limitation of anthocyanin production and purification technology, the anthocyanin content in these products is limited.
Our project aims at producing anthocynanin at low cost and high purity. We researched about potential end-user products that are already on the market to add our anthocyanin into it. The following idea is from our Human Practices interview with Dr. Dan Ding from the Good Vision. We learned many young people use eye patches when they sleep at night. We consider using anthocyanins in eye patches, and Dr. Dan Ding and Good Vision helped us fabricate a few eye patch sample to test if delphinidin meets their product safety and quality requirements.
We got a good result in this year's experiment, and we're very confident that we can apply our project.
3. Production Supports
For mass production, our lab conditions might not be the optimal, such as temperature and pressure. Experiments will have to be carried out for production quality on various scales using common industry-level processes.
Safety concerns during large-scale production and usage will be a different consideration from lab environment. We might have to consider if the product can be easily and safely controlled during the entire manufacturing process. Sometimes even the powder of a safety substance can cause health hazards.
Fortunately there have been many application using anthocyanin, and we will consult relevant experts regarding the regulations and enforcement in China and around the world.
We have a strong confidence that our product will be warmly welcomed based on our survey in Human Practices. Nonetheless, when we need to work as an entrepreneur, we will think like one. We will conduct market investigation in wider area, on broader scale and with more detailed questions to learn about customer preferences. Products engineering cycle will be iterated to offer the best possible solutions to save our young people’s eyes!