Bacterial infections are mostly treated with a prescription of medicines called antibiotics. However, harmful bacteria can change and resist to these antibiotics. The infection is harder to treat as antibiotics become less effective. Antibiotic resistance is an increasing threat to global health. The UK government predicts that a continued rise in drug resistance bacteria would lead to 10 million people dying every year by 2050. Treatable illnesses, such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, salmonellosis, blood poisoning or minor infections could become lethal.
We are a team of 17 students with 13 different nationalities taking part in the international Genetically Engineered Machine competition hosted by the MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Boston. By combining our skills in microbiology, engineering and design, we are happy to represent the City of Stockholm at the iGEM Giant Jamboree. The annual iGEM competition challenges students to design, create and implement a project about synthetic biology. This year we have decided to address the issue of antibiotic resistance.
Research has found an alternative treatment for bacterial infections called Phage Therapy. Bacteriophages are viruses found in the environment that evolve along with their bacterial prey. They only target bacteria, not our own cells and are therefore good candidates for bacterial infection treatments. Phages have two distinct lifcycles, the lytic cycle - where they are active -and the lysogenic cycle - where they are dormant. Current phage therapies uses virulent phages that are maintained in the lytic cycle. They attach to bacteria, inject their DNA, and replicates inside the host cell until the burst of the bacteria.
Unfortunately, phages encounter many chemical and physical barriers on their way to the site of infection. At the end, only a small number of survival phages reach the bacterial infection showing high variance in efficacy. That’s why, current treatment are not therapeutically viable yet.
This is when our team comes in the picture. Our team is working with temperate bacteriophages that can reach both the active and dormant states. The second life cycle of phages is the lysogenic cycle. In that case, the phage lay dormant in the bacteria. We are creating a molecular switch that can control the two life cycles of a phage. We can direct the phage into the lysogenic cycle if we want it dormant on the way to the site of infection. Once the phage has reached its target, we can force it to enter the lytic cycle and thus kill the harmful bacteria. By inserting the phage in a harmless carrier bacteria we would make sure it travels through the body without being damaged.
Our project is named after the great female scientist Esther Lederberg who first discovered the first temperate phage - the Lambda phage - and greatly contributed to science progress in synthetic biology. And we believe this tribute will resonate with a more general recognition of women in science. With our project Esther we want to contribute in making phage therapy a safe and more sustainable treatment to help save millions of lives.
In order to have enough resources to finish our project in time and present it at the Giant Jamboree in Boston, we still need a 30,000 SEK extra fundings for:
- Scientific Material: to cover the order of genetic sequences, primers and enzymes - 18,000 SEK
- Human Practices Material: to cover the expenses of communication tools (video, documentary, flyers, posters) - 7,000 SEK
- Team Promotion: to cover the purchase of iGEM Stockholm merchandise (hoodies, stickers) for the Giant Jamboree - 3,250 SEK
- Indiegogo Platform Fees - 1,750 SEK