Overview:
Communication is the foundation of team cooperation and the premise of team success. Good communication can promote teamwork and lead to better teamwork. Through conversations with people from all walks of life and other iGEM teams, we have gained a deeper understanding of our role in iGEM, received a lot of good advice, and adapted our work accordingly. This year, ZJUintl-China used interesting videos and PPT to enlighten Chinese primary school students, interviewed many medical professionals and non-medical professionals to exchange their views on anti-aging and Ambrosia-T, and conducted online and offline communication and cooperation with ZJU-China and other iGEM teams.
Thanks to our allies for their help throughout our year-round planning. With your help, Ambrosia-T can continue to improve, and we can keep our original intention.
Communicate with the public
Talk to people from all walks of life:
IGEM Human Practice street interview series is point-to-point in-depth research conducted by ZJUintl-China for the social masses, aiming to solicit public opinions extensively in the early stage, understand public ideas in depth, comprehensively summarize market demand, and strive to improve product competitiveness. From April to August this year, our team successively interviewed medical students, businessmen, business students, pharmaceutical students, and pharmaceutical salespeople from all walks of life, introduced synthetic biology and Ambrosia-T to them, and asked their opinions on Ambrosia-T.
On May 30, 2022, our team conducted an in-depth interview with a junior clinical medical student (later referred to as a medical student) and a businesswoman on the topic of "cell therapy for aging prevention" through online contact. During the interview, the interviewees cooperated with the interview very warmly and put forward their opinions according to the aspects of "preliminary preparation", "treatment means", "treatment effect" and "treatment cost". Medical students raised the question of whether Ambrosia-T can be applied to the population with low immunity and whether it can save middle and advanced organ fibrosis based on the target population of Ambrosia-T, the efficacy of Ambrosia-T, and the difficulty of the treatment operation. We tried our best to answer this question and got inspiration from the interviewees to improve Ambrosia-T. While the second is not familiar with the interviewer to many nouns in the field of medicine, through our introduction, he developed an interest in, putting forward the hope that patients can pass the test that occupies the home knows oneself after Ambrosia-T organs after treatment of the aging situation and Ambrosia-T prices too expensive precious opinion, had a great inspiration to us.
On June 7, 2022, through online contact, we interviewed a business student and a pharmacy student on the same topic. During the interview, through our enthusiastic introduction to synthetic biology and Ambrosia-T, the interviewees developed a strong interest in it and gave their opinions on the problems Ambrosia-T encountered in entering the market. Medical students and business students said that the price of Ambrosia-T is relatively high, and it is relatively difficult to enter the market. They asked us to do our best to reduce the cost. In this regard, our team held an intra-group meeting and consulted our mentor, and came up with a plan to apply for medical subsidies from the Chinese government after the product was launched. Again, communication is a two-way street. The students introduced to us the current situation of anti-aging drugs in China and expressed their affirmation and support for Ambrosia-T's idea. From the perspective of market supply and demand, business students put forward that any product needs to have a clear target group, and said that at present, according to the price of Ambrosia-T, we target the first-tier cities and high-end consumer groups. We benefited a lot from the valuable input of the respondents.
To further understand the current demand for anti-aging drugs and the affordable price for the public, we interviewed the general sales manager of Tongrentang Drugstore in Hunan Province, China on July 26 this year. After the basic introduction of synthetic biology and Ambrosia-T, the manager indicated that according to the expected therapeutic effect of Ambrosia-T, if Ambrosia-T could relieve organ fibrosis in the elderly with convenience and few side effects, it was expected to apply for medical subsidies from the Chinese government and reduce the cost of patients. At the same time, the manager said Ambrosia-T is more suitable for sale in hospitals than pharmacies and praised Ambrosia-T's concept. Finally, the manager mentioned again that it is very important to carry medicines easily. The manager's valuable advice enabled us to find caffeine as the start switch of CAR-T and made corresponding countermeasures for the cost, which provided great support for our Ambrosia-T improvement.
After these interviews, we found that practitioners in the medical field pay more attention to the side effects and efficacy of drugs while interviewers in the commercial field pay more attention to the price and commercialization of products. During the interview, we timely recorded the suggestions made by the interviewers and discussed the feasibility with the whole team after the interview. Based on this, our team optimized the negative feedback switch to reduce the side effects of Ambrosia-T and discussed with our tutor to apply for medical insurance from the Chinese government to reduce the cost of using Ambrosia-T for the public after the launch of Ambrosia-T. At the same time, we know that there is still a lack of understanding of synthetic biology as a new industry in Chinese society. After the interview, we also put forward ideas for the popularization of synthetic biology and put them into practice in volunteer teaching.
Sharing our story online
The WeChat official account is one of the most extensive platforms for disseminating our ideas and knowledge in China. ZJUintl-item 2022 regularly publishes popular science and education articles through our registered public account, covering a wide range of fields from introduction to synthetic biology, iGEM competition, interviews on human practice, and biological mechanisms of Ambrosia-T. In the article, we turn abstract terms into blunt language, with the help of our illustrations and examples, so that every reader can fully understand.
Education
On the Education page, you can see how ZJUintl-China 2022 is practicing the popularization of synthetic biology in volunteer education and the introduction of Ambrosia-T, especially for poor families. We have conducted online and offline lectures and quiz contests, and published articles on social media to make these resources available to all who need them, so that more people can learn about synthetic biology and Ambrosia-T. Our educational work has been widely recognized by the audience, and we hope that ZJU will continue to work to communicate synthetic biology to the public in the future. The details are displayed on that page.
Communicate with tutors and experts
Weekly meeting
Since we proposed the idea of Ambrosia-T, from the design of the project to the implementation of the whole stage of the project, we insisted on weekly talks with the instructor, exchanging the progress of the project, existing problems, and solutions, and repeatedly check the correctness and practicability of the project. In the communication with the tutor, we exercised our scientific research ability, constantly optimized the experimental scheme of Ambrosia-T, and achieved some encouraging results.
Talk to PHD students in our lab
Shao Mi is one Ph.D. candidate at Zhejiang university, school of medicine. In the experiment's early stage, we used electroporation to engineer CAR-T. However, the electro-transfection efficacy is not always as good as expected, which has troubled us for a long time. Knowing our problem, Shao Mi provided us with a modified protocol and recommended us to the core facilities of Zhejiang university school of medicine. With the help of a new transfection system and a new protocol, the experiment results were significantly improved.
Talk to expert in jurisprudence
On April 22nd of this year, ZJUintl-China invited Dr. Bao from Tsinghua University Law School and iGEM Humanities Practice Program Officer to join us for a prospective panel discussion. Prime Minister Dr. Bao listened to an overview of our team's research project, Ambrosia-T, and our understanding of biomedical ethics. Later, Dr. Bao further explained experimental ethics from the perspective of biomedicine and iGEM humanistic practice. Dr. Bao systematically explained the principle of never release, experimental "whitelist", why human experimentation is prohibited, and why clinical experimentation is prohibited. He also explained the nature of humanistic practice and iGEM's expectations for the humanistic practice of each team. Members of ZJUintl-China exchanged views with Dr. Bao on the development of humanistic practice, the observance of basic experimental ethics, and the principles of project evaluation and award. In this symposium, the team members had a deeper understanding of the principles of iGEM humanistic practice and experimental ethics and achieved good results. Here, we are very grateful to Dr. Bao!
Talk to expert in biology
Understanding the expectations and opinions of experts motivated us to improve and perfect Ambrosia-T in the later stage, so we took the initiative to interview experts in different fields online in June this year. Before our interviews, we gave all invited professors a comprehensive introduction to our program and answered any questions they might have about Ambrosia-T to ensure that all suggestions we received were unbiased and based on an understanding of our program.
Prof. Meng uses nematodes as his research object to reveal the DNA regulation during neural development and aging. In the face of the difficult problem of specificity screening of aging surface targets, Professor Meng proposed to narrow the scope of the target organ by taking the liver with strong regeneration ability, and another 1-2 organs can be selected as alternatives. This greatly inspired us, and after undergoing a literature search, we selected DPP4 protein on the surface of senescent fibroblasts as our target to alleviate fibrosis in the heart, liver, and lungs.
Professor Wang Dongrui is a senior expert in the field of cellular immunotherapy, mainly devoted to the research and improvement of the CAR-T cell production process. Wang pointed out that the fatal side effect of CAR-T therapy, cytokine storm, is thought to be mainly derived from myeloid cell cytokines rather than CAR-T cells. Therefore, how to prevent excessive activation of myeloid cells is crucial for the control of CRS. In response, the professor suggests that elements other than cars could be introduced into T cells, such as suicide-inducing genes or antagonists of specific cytokines, but we need to be very careful not to compromise their effector potency. Changing CAR chassis cells is also a new idea, and the professor suggests that the car can be placed on NK cells, macrophages, and gamma-delta T cells. An advantage of these approaches is that these cells do not cause severe GvHD in the presence of HLA mismatch. So we are more likely to produce universal cell therapy products. With the advice and guidance of Prof., we decided to enable CAR-macrophages to verify the caffeine switch.
Communicate with other iGEMers
Conference
On May 1st, together with CPU_CHINA, ZJU-China, HiZJU-China, and ZJU-China, we jointly launched the first iGEM National Academic Conference -- iGEM Meeting Up. We are very honored to have invited Mr. Yuhan Bao, iGEM Human Practice Project Officer, Dr. Yunlong Liu, a young member of the Pharmacogenomics Committee of Jiangsu Pharmaceutical Society, Augustine Wang, Director of Zhiyin Capital Project, and other guests. The conference, with 26 iGEM teams participating, is a platform to exchange exciting experiences and adventures during the iGEM competition. Through this conference, we were equipped to make an impact on the iGEM community and the real world, and we hope that the iGEM Meeting Up event will keep up in the future.
Meet up
Sensing the importance of cross-regional team communication, we took the initiative to communicate with NMU-China and NJU-China respectively in June 2022 on the production and credit analysis and modeling of the dry experimental group, experimental design, and progress of the wet experimental group, project cost calculation in human practice and other contents. After the communication, we still kept in touch and communicated with NMU-China about Human Practice again in July.
To better improve our project and communicate with more outstanding iGEM teams at home and abroad. ZJUintl-China 2022 took part in the Meetup hosted by Bioplus-China on July 22 this year, with a total of seven teams, including the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Xi 'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and Zhejiang University of Technology, as well as two teams from high schools, which truly realized the exchange of multiple ages and aspects. During the meeting, we introduced our project Ambrosia-T and listened carefully to other teams. The participating teams discussed the common issues and development prospects of iGEM humanistic practice, broadened the ideas of the participants, and achieved good results.
Co-create a synthetic biology atlas
To popularize synthetic biology to the public and give a comprehensive and innovative overview of synthetic biology, we have carried out the work of mapping synthetic biology with CPU_CHINA, ZJUT-China, HiZJU-China, TJUSLS_China, ZJU-China and NMU-China, including the overview, ideas, technologies, applications, crossover and prospects of synthetic biology. Through multiple online communication, the teams greatly improved their understanding of synthetic biology and established good friendships during the mapping process. Everyone can check out our files at https://medium.com/@ZJUintl-China_iGEM/synthetic-biology-atlas-74cef730aed0
Conclusion
Through volunteer teaching and interviews, we hope to spread the basic knowledge of synthetic biology to students and people from all walks of life. By Posting tweets and videos on our official WeChat account, we hope to help people realize how synthetic biology is shaping our world. Through communication within the iGEM community, we gained not only valuable experience and input on experimental design and execution but also critical reflection on each project, including how it could benefit the world and the harm it could cause. Through external education and internal communication, we have gradually realized our commitment to society and improved our internal research capabilities.