Thinker-ShenZhen  ChDeHome

Fungal dermatoses are superficial fungal skin infections that affect the mucous membranes, hair, skin, and other skin appendages. They typically show up as round or oval patches of redness and itching called body moss, head moss, or foot moss. Despite the fact that the majority of dermatophytosis have no obvious health consequences, they are sometimes extremely contagious, challenging to cure, and prone to recurrence, which makes them a major nuisance in people's life.

Foot moss infection can occur because fungal skin diseases are very susceptible to infection, such as walking barefoot in a bathhouse or swimming in a pool, or even stepping in a puddle on the side of the road on a rainy day. The prevalence of fungal skin diseases is extremely high, affecting 20-25% of the world's population, and in hot, sweaty tropical climates, this figure can reach 50% or higher. Furthermore, because fungi are alkaline-loving and acid-averse by nature, people who frequently use soap or toiletries are more likely to contract fungal infections.

Symptoms of most common fungal skin diseases include redness, dryness, whitening, itching, small blisters, and pustules. Although the majority of the symptoms do not pose a significant threat to the human health system, they do cause significant disruption in people's lives. For example, because of the extremely high infection rate, shoes worn by people with foot moss can spread the fungus to others, putting patients' relatives and friends, as well as children at home, at a very high risk of infection.

Antifungal medications, either topical or oral, are a common treatment for fungal skin disease. Orally administered drugs that can effectively kill the fungus and act as antifungal infection include itraconazole, fluconazole, ketoconazole, voriconazole, and other antifungal drugs. Externally applied drugs include azoles, acrylamides, and polyenes, which can be used directly on the skin to kill fungus and control the disease. There are also disinfectants that will be used for the prevention and treatment of fungal skin diseases, such as benzalkonium bromide, bleach, and strong decontaminants, which are primarily used for disinfecting patient clothing, bed sheets and covers, and other items that patients come into direct contact with, thereby lowering the risk of fungal skin infections.

However, the current therapeutic drugs, whether oral or topical, have some side effects. Because of their low absorption, topical antifungal drugs rarely cause systemic side effects. Local skin reactions, such as mild redness, a burning sensation, or scaling, are possible after topical application, and some people may experience severe allergic reactions. Systemic side effects of antifungal drugs, whether taken orally or intravenously, can occur, with gastrointestinal reactions being the most common, including nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain, dyspepsia, abdominal distention, and, in some cases, abnormal liver function and skin allergic reactions. As a result, our group wants to re-examine the treatment of fungal dermatoses using synthetic biology, in order to reduce side effects and achieve a safer and more effective way to treat fungal dermatoses, so that elderly people and pregnant women can receive high-quality treatment safely and securely and have a better quality of life.

According to our investigation, the drugs targeting chitin in the market mainly prevent the fungus from producing by inhibiting its synthesis, while few drugs attack externally to degrade chitin, so we intend to use chitinase to degrade chitin in the cell wall of the fungus to destroy its structure to kill the fungus. However, most chitinases have only one catalytic section that can degrade chitin, and do not have binding ability, which will undoubtedly greatly reduce the binding degradation ability of chtitinase molecules, and thus the overall performance of degradation time is long and incomplete. In response to the above situation, we designed a synthetic biology method to add two binding structural domains from Bacillus cereus and Bacillus thuringiensis to the nitrogen and carbon segments of Streptomyces alfalfae's tributylase respectively, and the significantly improved degradation capacity meets our demand for efficient and rapid fungal killing.

The project of our Thinker-Shenzhen team is to improve the antifungal ability of tributylase for the treatment of fungal skin diseases by adding the tributyl binding structural domains from Bacillus cereus and Bacillus thuringiensis, respectively, to the nitrogen and carbon segments of tributylase from Streptomyces alfalfae by synthetic biology methods and presenting them as gels.

The name of our project is ChDe.

Chitinase + Dermatomycosis/Debut/Degrade/Defang

Our products can be used on the skin of humans and pets to treat fungal skin diseases, mainly in the form of gels to present drugs. We tailor and solve pain points for specific groups of people through different packaging designs and ingredient adjustments; Designed drugs with aromatic odors and cute packaging for young children to alleviate their resistance to medication; Designed for commuters to pack simple, portable, and odorless medications so that they can take them in their few free hours at work.

Picture book

Children usually ridicule and isolate others because of their physical differences. For example, if children with fungal skin diseases are not interfered with and educated, prejudice and incomprehension will be deeply rooted in their ideas and eventually exclude anyone who is different from them, which is not conducive to social harmony and stability. Therefore, we designed a picture book to subtly educate young children: even if others are different from you, you should tolerate and understand them, and should not laugh at and exclude them. Considering children's ability to accept and understand, we draw a lovely, simple but enlightening picture book, which tells the story of a little boy with fungal skin disease who transfers to a new school. Why does he suffer from others' prejudice and how does he resolve it? We believe that by reading this picture book, children can gradually acquire the ability to tolerate others, so as to make the world more understanding.

Kindergarten and Elementary School

In addition to picture books, we also gave lectures on skin diseases and synthetic biology in kindergartens and primary schools. Vivid and lovely PPT and self-designed stickers greatly stimulated their interest in synthetic biology. We hope that through this lecture, we can plant the seed of synthetic biology in their minds.

High School

We are also in shenzhen, the college of international exchange, synthetic biology lectures, we think of the lecture should also involve high school student, therefore, especially given the high school students knowledge reserves and the subject of interest, we on the basis of the original PPT to change the style, increased the content, introduced to them the origin of synthetic biology, development, application, and the future, After the lecture, there was a simple question and answer session, and gifts were handed out at the end. We hope to attract more high school students to iGEM and spark ideas through the synthetic biology lectures.