Team:Queens Canada/Human Practices
Human Practices
Introduction
The 2021 Queens_Canada team has been thrilled this year to learn from many of the past iGEMers as well as inspire future iGEMers to continue all the great work. It is easy to get lost in the technical aspects of the iGEM project, or any scientific project without considering how intertwined the world of research is with the world of politics, media, the environment, and the rest of society. Our team has worked to emphasize community involvement with the development of our project to ensure that it is beneficial to the community. We have done this externally by reaching out and teaching youth, consulting industry and academic experts, hosting events for our school community, and collaborating with other past and present iGEM teams. We have also integrated our human practices work internally by having team meetings to reflect on our work and its impact as well as taking the feedback from the community and using it to guide our project design and implementation.
Our team wanted to ensure that with our project, we are not only able to utilize and create new scientific technology for users of this testing device and future iGEMers, but also to make sure our device fits within moral guidelines. The team had the ensure that all tests regarding animals were ethical as well as being economically, environmentally, and socially friendly. Black-legged ticks themselves are arthropods, which transmit Lyme disease however, other ticks that are transmitting other forms of borrelia which can cause relapsing fever are soft body ticks can also be detected. In the considerations for constructing our test, we knew that testing the tick itself was the best way to create a test that was able to test universally between animals and humans which inevitably leads to the tick itself being killed. After much research and deliberation, our team concluded that having a test that could be capable of helping not just one species, but many, greatly prevent Lyme borreliosis, is worth having to kill a single tick per test.
Another value that our team wanted to consider was the economic and financial burden of the test. Many past iterations of Lyme disease tests done by various groups consists of bulky and expensive components such as computer chips, fluorimeters, and large chambers to house samples. Our team wanted to ensure that our testing device was easy to produce, economically sensible, and financially reasonable for the consumer.
Integration
Introduction
Similar to other synthetic biology projects, there are other aspects to consider outside of the laboratory. The most important aspect to consider is the impact on stakeholders and the general public’s impressions and thoughts on the project. We wanted to go beyond this and use the public’s opinion to shape the goals of our project.
We consulted experts throughout the project to continually ensure that our project stayed in line with our team's mission with SUBLyme. Experts such as Lyme disease biochemistry and experts knowledgeable in the patients of Lyme disease were continuously consulted throughout the project. You can read about how these experts contributed to the project below.
Public Survey
We surveyed the Kingston community on their knowledge of Lyme disease and what they would most value in a Lyme disease testing device. Although we recognize that this information isn’t definitive and that we cannot use the data to draw any conclusions, the data provides a great suggestion of what areas of Lyme disease and device design our team should focus on to reflect these opinions. You can view the results in the Community Survey Page.
Overall, our team concluded that community awareness was a critical area to focus our efforts. As prevention is ultimately the best tool to prevent Lyme disease, the team focused on education. We also concluded that fast diagnosis times were crucial to the test based on the survey. Beyond the data collected for device design, we also used the survey as a metric for public awareness of Lyme disease. A variety of questions were asked which were designed to probe which areas of Lyme disease were more or less understood generally, which we could use to feedback into our public awareness. One of the biggest surprises was that many people did not know Kingston was a hotspot for Lyme disease.
Design Implementations:
- Prevention and awareness should be treated with high importance along with the device
- Fast diagnosis process, speed is a large concern among people surveyed
- Specificity, the test must be able to accurately test for Lyme disease with little to no false positives and false negatives
Market Segmentation Analysis
When we initially started this project, we intended this product to be available commercially to the public for a variety of uses. We quickly realized that many groups and communities would benefit greatly from a testing device. To direct our device and assay design, our team decided to separate each market segment and evaluate their needs and wants individually to try to make the best device possible. We identified the market segments as Doctors, Veterinarians, Equestrians, Livestock Owners, Pet Owners, Outdoor Enthusiasts, and Researchers. This is explained in the Market Segmentation Analysis Page.
Summary of Design Implementations:
- Minimal sizing and portability of the device
- Focus on a consumer-based product with easy use, not a medical or veterinary level device
- Fast results, consumers get an immediate test result
Expert Interviews and Guidance
To get a better bearing on what the Lyme disease field needs in terms of diagnostics as well as the best methods to go about that, we consulted experts in the field to optimize our device design and our overall project and interaction with the community.
Dr. Andrew Winterborn is a veterinarian at Queens University and the 2017 Veterinarian of the Year by the Canadian Association of Laboratory Animal Science. Our project began with a brainstorming session with Dr. Winterborn for synthetic biology-based projects that may have positive applications in the veterinary world back in February of 2021 where he suggested that testing for Lyme disease may be a route to explore. This was because, as he pointed out, Kingston Ontario, where Queens University is located, is a hotspot of Lyme disease, with a very high portion of ticks containing Borrelia Burgdorferi, and thus, animals may become infected without the notice of their owners. This is especially true of farm animals. When talking further about the idea with Dr. Winterborn what would be a void we could fill in the world of Lyme disease that would work for both humans and animals, he suggested that we test the tick itself for Lyme disease after it has bitten. This way, the test could be universal between animals as well as would allow for a faster diagnosis time, which is also a problem in the Lyme disease community. Dr. Winterborn has helped give direction to our project and has helped us align ourselves with the needs of the veterinary community on this project as well as provided guidance for the creation of the device as well.
Overall Thoughts:
- Device design should satisfy testing for animals as well as humans
- Tick testing would allow for fast and universal testing
- Test should be simple to use and not designed for medical professionals, designed for pet owners, farmers and others
Dr. Nader Ghasemlou is a researcher at Queens University and has obtained his MSc from Queen's, a Ph.D. from McGill University, and completed his postdoctoral work with Dr. Clifford Woolf at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Ghasemlou has been conducting Lyme disease research in his lab in both investigating the role of pain and neuroimmunology caused by Lyme disease in mice models as well as has lead projects gathering data on Lyme disease patients in Canada and the pain related to this disease state. He has continually provided guidance and support for our team in developing our testing device, particularly in the biochemistry aspect of the project involving the biosensor system used in our testing device.
Dr. Robert Colautti is an associate professor at Queen’s University in the Department of Biology. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and completed post-doctoral training at Duke University (North Carolina), the University of British Columbia, and the University of Tuebingen in Germany. Dr. Colautti has been researching Ixodes ticks in the Kingston area intensively and has been working to develop a method for rapidly detecting Lyme disease in ticks as well by using high-throughput sequencing methods capable of categorizing the microbiome of the tick. He also investigates the socioeconomic aspect of Lyme disease. Since Dr. Colautti’s research overlaps substantially with our project, he has been able to provide us with not only device design guidance, but also implementation and application advice as well. Additionally, Dr. Colautti has been a cornerstone in starting the EDGE of Lyme case competition event to help educate and inform across the Kingston and Queen’s community.
Overall Thoughts:
- The assay must be specific
- The Canadian and global Lyme disease community needs should be considered as a top priority
- Stressing portability and accessibility of the device
Dr. Prameet Sheth is an associate professor at Queens University in the Department of Pathology and Molecular medicine. He is also a clinical microbiologist at the Kingston General Hospital, has an MSc in Hematology from McMaster University, and a Ph.D. in HIV Immunology from the University of Toronto. He completed a Fellowship in Medical Microbiology and Bacteriology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Sheth helped us early on in the development of our project, as he is involved in both the academic world and the clinical world of Lyme disease, he was able to help direct our project towards the field that could benefit the most.
Dr. Carlos Escobedo is an associate professor at Queens University and is cross-appointed with the Royal Military College. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Victoria and completed his post-doctoral studies at the Swiss Institute of Technology. Dr. Escobedo helped our team develop the lateral flow portion of our testing device. He worked closely with our Dry Lab Coordinator, Kathryn, to develop an assay design specific for Borrelia spirochetes and provided continuous insight into the development of our assay.
Overall Thoughts:
- Membrane pore size must be engineered to allow spirochete or bacterial fragments to pass through at an acceptable rate
- Lysis buffer solution troubleshooting: buffer must lyse the borrelia but retain protein solubility and integrity
- Tick puncture calculations: insight on the calculations behind the force required by microneedles to puncture and extract the midgut contents of a tick for testing
Dr. George Chaconas is a professor at the University of Calgary in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and is an expert in the field of Lyme disease. We met with Dr. Chaconas in the early phases of our project to seek his guidance in the development of the chemical assay itself. Particularly, Dr. Chaconas is highly knowledgeable in the surface proteins Borrelia burgdorferi displays, particularly in the variable surface proteins which may have changing domains. Our team was looking for possible serological targets for our test and had compiled a shortlist of surface proteins which were able to discuss with Dr. Chaconas. Some of our possible targets, like outer surface protein C (ospC), were deemed unusable as many proteins are expressed in the mammalian host and not the Ixodes host and vice versa. In the end, we decided ospA was the first target we should move forward with as it was pointed out that this protein is expressed when the spirochete is in the midgut of the tick as well as is a constant protein with no variable domains, making it easier to find antibody fragments to create the bioreceptor.
Overall Thoughts:
- Avoid variable domain proteins for further bioreceptor target development
- Be sure the protein is a surface protein which is constantly expressed or expressed in the midgut of the tick
- Protein concentrations for expression can play an important role in detection
Execution
Our team couldn’t have accomplished this project without the help of our graduate student advisors who helped us at every turn with our experimental designs, lab techniques, and project overall.
Caitlin Doubleday
Byron Hunter
Kpdy Klupt
Nolan Neville
Irsa Shoukrat
Pooja Sridhar
Education
ScienceQuest
In response to the feedback from our community survey, we recognized that the public believes that awareness and public education is a crucial factor in stopping the spread of Lyme Disease. Our team worked with another Queens-based organization, ScienceQuest, which hosts science summer camps for elementary and junior high school kids. Our team was able to teach kids about the danger of Lyme disease and ticks as well as play a few science-based Kahoots, host an at-home experiment, and introduce them to the world of synthetic biology. Hopefully inspiring the next generation of iGEMers!
Edge of Lyme
Edge of Lyme is a hack-a-thon style competition backed by the Wicked Ideas grant. Various researchers and educators supporting and helping with this year’s iGEM project were collaborating to further Lyme disease research. They invited us to help organize this coming event in conjunction with the Bioinformatics club at Queens University in which students from all disciplines form teams and collaborate to solve various problems in the world of Lyme disease. All participants in this weeklong competition will be receiving financial compensation in addition to prizes that can be won at this competition. This event is set to take place in February 2022.
This event is target towards community awareness as a response to our survey data on the importance of community education and awareness. By organizing and hosting an event that spans all disciplines, we can raise awareness about Lyme disease and its tick counterparts in the university community here at Queens.