About depression
Have you ever suffered from depression?
Depression, a common serious mood disorder, causes disability worldwide.
According to Report of the Development of National Mental Health in China, the detection rate of depression in adolescents was 24%, of which the proportion of major depression was 7.4%; 18.5% of college students had a tendency of depression, and 4.2% has a high tendency.
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24%
adolescents
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18.5%
collegestudents
Current Situation
Globally, about 4.4% of the global population suffers from depressive disorders and 3.6% with anxiety disorders. There have been some minor changes in global incidence in the WHO region: the incidence of depression ranges from 3.6% in the Western Pacific to 5.4% in Africa. For anxiety disorders, prevalence ranged from 2.9 percent in the Western Pacific to 5.8 percent in the Americas.
Present condition
Current
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Present Solution
In this case, in recent years, more and more doctors will choose 2 or more different antidepressant mechanisms of action drug combination therapy, which to some extent coincides with the theory that depression may have different underlying pathophysiology mechanisms. But care should also be taken to assess the benefit-risk ratio of combination pharmacotherapy, given that we know little about the correspondence between the complex pathological mechanisms of disease and the complex mechanisms of action of drugs. How to regulate combination drug therapy is still a difficult problem.
Drug dependence
Financial burdern
Side effect accumulation
showcase
Check our creative solution
A novel anti-depression strategy
Based on an intestinal probiotic Bifidobacterium longum that has
antidepressant effects on its own, we hope to generate a genetically modified
strain that is able to be administered as a drug.
FIRST
First of all,we give it the ability to produce another natural antidepressant drug, SAMe, which is a health care product that an effect similar to that of prescription drugs and is relatively mild, does not produce neurogenic resistance or dependency.
SAMe
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OscillatorWHU-Reach for
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Then, the secretion of SAMe will be regulated by an oscillator, so that it will be on a long-term, regular, and periodic basis.
THIRD
Last, by oral administration, our probiotic bacteria will colonize the intestines of depressed patients. To prevent their leakage, we designed a temperature-controlled safety switch and a actively termination switch through which we can actively terminate the therapeutic effect of our bacteria be administration of AHL.
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What our partners say
Buoshuo Zhou
Team Leader
Jiaze Liu
Vice Leader
Xinyan Zhang
Vice Leader
Hongyu Dong
Mathematical Modeling Engineer
Xiaoyi Lin
Computer Engineer
Weicheng Zhan
physical Modeling Engineer
Chang Lu
Art DesignerInsights
Read our Project
Our Wet Lab Parts
Read MoreWe used and constructed parts that are considered an important part of our project, and most of them have been tested to ensure their reliability.
Our Wet Lab Engineering
Read MoreWe have accomplished Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) cycles in Production Module, Oscillator Module, Directed Evolution Module, Safety Switch Module and Hardware.
Our Wet LabResults
Read MoreWe have done lots of experiments and honestly documented results for future analysis and improvement. The credible results guide us to proper direction and help us verify out design.
