Introduction:

Even today, 240,000 people die of cancer per year in Germany [1]. Half a million people were diagnosed with cancer in Germany in 2019 [2]. For these people and their relatives, it is a shock because they often do not know what will happen next. What does it even mean to have “cancer”? Many people only deal with this disease when someone they know is affected, when they themselves are at risk or even when they themselves have the disease. Often this happens only in old age because the probability of cancer increases with age [3]. However, many young people can also develop the disease. Approximately 15,000 young people, between 15-39 years, are diagnosed with cancer each year [4]. These figures show that it is even more important to educate young people about various tumor diseases and early indications. This is exactly the goal of our “iGEM spreads awareness campaign” which we have launched with the iGEM Team ASIJ Tokyo via social media.

Our first steps:

At the beginning of July, we held our first team meeting with ASIJ Tokyo. We exchanged ideas about our planned campaign and discussed how we want to implement it. The first important discussion point was the name of our campaign. Since we would like to include other iGEM teams to achieve a greater diversity of contributions and cancer types, we decided on the name "iGEM spreads awareness". For our Instgram account, we needed a catchy logo that also reflected our campaign idea. In the end, the following logo was created:

Other relevant questions are around the design of the contributions. We came up with a basic design by which we wanted to publish our posts. However, it was also important to us that we gave other teams sufficient freedom/space to use their own design. Consequently, the design was offered to all interested teams, but the usage was not enforced. Another question we discussed in one of our meetings was what content could be displayed. From general information like symptoms and risk factors of the corresponding cancer, to possible interviews with patients or doctors, we came up with many topics.

Involving other Teams:

Both of our teams have started to look for possible iGEM teams that might be interested in contributing to our campaign. So, we started to contact different iGEM teams who are also dealing with cancer.

We also wrote a guideline to integrate all important information. Based on the main idea of our account, up to ideas and information how the teams can be part of our iGEM spreads awareness campaign, the most important information can be read there. When a team wanted to be part of the campaign, in most cases we started with a meeting and introduced everything which is important to know. To get to know the teams and their projects, we gave each other detailed insights into our projects. We then learned about the types of cancer they are working on. At the same time, we collected initial ideas with the team on how they would like to shape their contribution to the iGEM spreads awareness campaign. We showed example posts that we have created for our type of cancer (esophageal cancer and breast cancer) that have already been published on our account. Afterwards, we sent the guideline to the teams so that they have all the important information available again in one document. To give them credit, on each post the respective team created they were of course also tagged.

The following articles were written and published during the year as part of our iGEM spreads awarness campaign:

iGEM TU_Braunschweig:

iGEM ASIJ-Tokyo:

iGEM CUHK-Hong Kong-SBS:

iGEM KU Leuven:

iGEM Barcelona:

iGEM Barcelona with iGEM Munich:

iGEM Wageningen:

iGEM Thessaloniki

Outlook:

We hope that the Instagram channel we have created together will contribute to a better understanding of cancer. We hope that this campaign of other iGEM teams dealing with cancer will keep this channel alive and continue to raise awareness. We see great potential in our social media campaign to reach especially the younger generation. Education not only helps people who have the disease themselves, but also the relatives and friends of people with cancer.

References:

1. Statista. (2022, May 18). Todesfälle aufgrund von Krebs in Deutschland bis 2020. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/172573/umfrage/krebstote-in-deutschland/
2. Erdmann, F., Spix, C., Katalinic, A., Christ, M., Folkerts, J., Hansmann, J., Kranzhöfer, K., Kunz, B., Manegold, K., Penzkofer, A., Treml, K., Vollmer, G., Weg-Remers, S., Barnes, B., Buttmann-Schweiger, N., Dahm, S., Fiebig, J., Franke, M., Gurung-Schönfeld, I., … Wienecke, A. (2021). Krebs in Deutschland für 2017/2018. Robert Koch-Institut. https://doi.org/10.25646/8353
3. Ukraintseva, Svetlana V., and Anatoli I. Yashin. “Individual Aging and Cancer Risk: How Are They Related?” Demographic Research, vol. 9, 2003, pp. 163–96. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26348095. Accessed 4 Oct. 2022.
4. Junge Erwachsene mit Krebs - Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe | DKG. (2022, October 9). Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://www.krebsgesellschaft.de/onko-internetportal/basis-informationen-krebs/krebs-und-psyche/junge-erwachsene-mit-krebs-hilfe-zur-selbsthilfe.html