Team:Humboldt Berlin/Collaborations
The initial contact between our teams occurred through the official iGEM 2021 “Collaborations” Slack Channel early in 2021. After some emailing we found that our project had great similarities as both of our teams tried to tackle cancer using Salmonella. For a start, we exchanged ideas and literature, discussed our project advancements and related questions and met in a biweekly rhythm throughout the year.
Both teams want their respective Salmonella cells to express specific agents and / or biomarkers during the accumulation in tumor microenvironments. And, as we found out, lactate concentrations are increased near tumors due to their altered metabolic state. Thus, both our teams decided to use lactate inducible promoters, called PlldR . We ended up using slightly different promoters, however, we are still confident that results are comparable.
iGEM UBC 2021 used the Salmonella optimized, but uncharacterized PlldR (Part XXX), iGEM HU 2021 used the E. coli derived and already established PlldR part (BBa_K1847008). Finally, as an additional effort to deepen our collaboration efforts, we decided to host a social media campaign to raise awareness for Salmonella as a possible cancer therapy. Our teams researched and created several info graphics together to increase the knowledge about the alternative therapy approach.
We used her photo - which shows some pens in a glass - on our website for free. Thank you Jessica!
Ryoji provided the photo of people walking on the street, we used on our Human Practices page. For free! Thank you Ryoji!
Collaborations
UBC iGEM | Vancouver
Jessica Lynn Lewis
Ryoji Iwata