Team:KULeuven/Project

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Project brainstorm

Favourite previous iGEM projects


Maarten Breckpot


Nathalie Busschaert


Jonas Demeulemeester

  • Virotrap Ljubljana 2007
  • RNAi enhanced logic circuit Princeton 2007
  • Other nice parts/devices:
    • Caltech: Riboswitch design for targeted cell death/molecular sensor
    • Cambridge: Inducible bigger pore protein for E.coli
    • Harvard: Quorum-sensing & targeting!
    • Melbourne: Red/blue light responsive system through chimeric photoreceptors-kinases
    • Peking U: λ-based bistable switch = very powerful
    • UCSF: compartmentalization! Rewired MAPK cascade signaling through scaffolds ≅ circuit board


Andim Doldurucu


Jan Mertens


Benjamien Moeyaert


Stefanie Roberfroid


Hanne Tytgat


Elke Van Assche


Nick Van Damme

--> idea: solve a nice mathematical problem

--> idea: build an integrator to solve your own ODE's, also build a differentiator to make a PID-controller


Antoine Vandermeersch


Dries Vercruysse


Sigrid De Keersmaecker

iGEM judging tracks

  • Foundational Research - basic science and engineering research
  • Information Processing - genetically encoded control, logic, and memory
  • Energy - biological fuels, feedstocks, and other energy projects
  • Environment- sensing bioremediation of environmental state
  • Health & Medicine - applied projects with the goal of directly improving the human condition

Other

Idea exchange - iGEM ideas posted by other teams

Our project

Our abstract

A first idea: cancer treatment with genetically modified blood cells

As cancer cells need a lot of energy to replicate themselves, they should be well provided with blood. Therefore, blood cells could be the right choice for in situ treatment of cancer. First, we should immobilize these blood cells on the cancer cells. Subsequently, these blood cells should secrete specific agents that reduce the activity of the cancer cells. (These 2 steps may come in handy if we want to split up in 2 subgroups)

Notes

  • Sounds like a great idea! Anti-angiogenic therapy is one of the big hopes for anti-tumor treatments. But let's keep in mind that angiogenesis (the formation of blood vessels) is only a late hallmark of tumors (more about these hallmarks of cancer -PDF). It is however a significant barrier to break through if the tumor has to grow past a certain (very limited) size. So this would be more like a therapy for later-stage malignancies, which would also be great because it's often the metastasis (the spreading of) of the tumor that is causing the more visible effects of the cancer. (pain, deterioration, ... and eventually, if untreated death). - Jonas 12:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Anyhow, if we proceed with this idea, it will be a challenge to get everything ready and produced in the erythrocyte (red blood cell) before it loses it's nucleus and thus also the ability to initiate de novo transcription. And to keep all this machinery silent in non-docked erythrocytes. I'm liking this challenge though. Besides this has an upside as well as I feel that consequences would be less severe in this non-cell if things go awry in the system. :) - Jonas 17:30, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I just thought of something that might be quite critical. If I recall correctly, there are 3 main ways in which tumors acquire blood supply.
  1. The first one is through a recapitulation of embryonic development. This is the recruitment of vascular endothelial precursors or the activation of local endothelium via factors like VEGF (angiogenic sprouting or intussusceptive growth). In this case, the 'vessels' of the tumor blood supply are lined mostly with endothelial cells which are actually NOT malignant, but are kind of working together with the tumor cells.
  2. A successful cancer metastasis (a secondary tumor, derived from the original) will co-opt blood vessels and these will thus also be lined mostly with endothelium cells.
  3. The third way to achieve blood supply is through vasculogenic mimicry, where the tumor cells actually DO line the bloodstream and mimic the normal vascular endothelium. Here tumor biomarkers should be directly displayed to the passing erythrocytes and would thus be potential targets for use in this approach.
OK, now for my point. In all these cases the vessels are highly abnormal, both structurally and functionally. They've got many holes, inhomogeneous bloodflow, are leaky, ... so it's very likely there will be exposed markers we can focus on but this will probably not always be the case. So I'm really liking this idea! - Jonas 14:17, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

A second idea: bacteria clean virusses in animals

This is an improvement of the idea of Ljubljana: we cannot reprogram the immune system, but we can reprogram bacteria. So, what we could do is make bacteria produce viral receptors (challenge 1) which are modified so that when a virus attaches to them, a restriction enzyme is transcribed (challenge 2). This RE degrades the viral DNA and the bacterial DNA, thus killing the bacterium. This way, the bacteria clean all virusses from the body. When this is established, we can induce a suicide signal for the bacteria (challenge 3). Big problems:

  • Is it possible to make a eukaryotic virus attack a prokaryote (also a fundamental question)?
  • Immunogenicity bacterium (cf. Bactoblood)! Bmoeyaert


Our project details

Part 2

The Experiments

Part 3

Results

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