FITI: an exclusive inquiry

The Sorbonne University 2022 iGEM team took to heart the idea of not limiting themselves to a simple synthetic biology project. Conscious of the current state of the environment, of the importance of innovation, and of the necessity of communicating with the world the inner workings of science and the bioindustries, our team decided to go the extra mile and convert its idea into a project. Within the team, the creation of the product followed the rules of design thinking (user-centered approach) and of lean startup (iterative approach based on the rapid dispatch of user test phase). By implicating future consumers in the reflection and design process, we can assure the project targets a concrete and pertinent issue.

OBSERVATION

The first step, observation, is primordial when starting or accelerating your project. If you don’t know your market or your users, how would you know what they expect from your product? This phase implies the action of literal detectives: going out to meet your target audience and local actors, observing them, interrogating them. The objective here is to understand one’s market, identify its target and focus on the correct problem to address.

After having identified certain parts of the project:

-Consumers
-Scientists
-Food industry
-Microalgae industry

Our goal was to interrogate, through interviews, polls and passive observation, our potential users, experts, and partners, as to understand their needs and expectations, and their opinion on certain subjects.

The surveys allowed us to correctly orient the NAWI project all throughout it’s genesis, and helped define the hypothetical product that would best fit our market:

State of the market

The study showed that, amongst the pollees, one third had already taken dietary supplements, nine percent had already taken algae-based supplements (for their antioxidant, antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties), and 79.5 percent had already consumed algae for their nutritive qualities and/or taste.

These results seemed promising as to the implementation of a new algae-based product, which consolidated the team’s commercialisation prospects.

A new product?

Throughout the study, 61.4 percent of pollees declared certainly willing to try a new algae-based food source, while the 38.6 remaining percent were mixed but not refractory to the idea. Of course, NAWI is a GMO, whose culture would be banned in France, but the study showed that 36.4 percent of pollees would favor the consumption of GMOs in the country (36.4 percent expressed no opinion). If GMOs were authorized in France, 40.9 percent of pollees declared they were ready to consume them, even more so if the product is eco-friendly and responsible.

How do you see it?

After explaining our iGEM project to the surveyed, we were able to gather their expectations about the product. Eighty percent of pollees knew at least one person affected by anemia: NAWI could be an effective treatment for iron-deficiency-linked ones. Surveyed preferred a chocolate or strawberry flavored product.

Design

The second step of product creation is the design stage. It consists in the discovery of an innovative idea that answers a previously identified need. The insights of potential NAWI consumers allowed us to envision our future product.

NAWI would take the form of a candy (chocolate- or strawberry-flavored), eco-responsible and able to combat iron-deficiency anemia, all while bringing the boons of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to our consumers. Thus, our team organized around a specific challenge: how to treat iron-deficiency anemia in a playful way, all the while spreading word of the advantages of microalgae consumption, and using our project to push for a greener agriculture and food-industry.

By leaning on strong R&D and modeling teams, the iGEM SU 2022 team holds a definite competitive advantage over a somewhat-virgin market with promising prospects.

An example recipe for spirulina candy was developed by the Dongoutchi farm, as to fight against malnutrition:

Recipe

-juice of 5 limes
-1.5 tablespoons of honey
-2 tablespoons of vegetable gelatin (agar-agar)
-1 teaspoon of spirulina powder

To answer our consumers' demands, we could reproduce the same recipe by replacing the spirulina with NAWI and the lime with strawberries, or try to create a NAWI-based chocolate as well. The addition of miraculine (or production by NAWI itself!) would also help compensate for the bitter taste of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.