Team:Shanghai Metro Utd/Implementation
Implementation
Overview
We did a lot of work to implement our project into the real world commercially. We
create a patent to protect our ideas and technology from being stolen by other companies. We can sell our
technology and ideas to medical companies. They can then legally use this technology and thought to create
medicines or proteins to protect and even cure patients. Our project is something that medicine companies
could not get from other companies. That is why we could successfully sell our technology to companies
without a lot of obstacles.
Product Development
Angiogenin has been recognized to play important roles in various physiological and
pathological processes, especially in neurodegenerative diseases.
In our project, we created a recombinant E. coli by introducing the plamid
pET-28a-rANG that can secret functional ANG protein, which could possibly serve as an in vitro method to
massive produce ANG for clinical use. As seen in figure above, we have already obtained the Freeze-dried
powder of the ANG protein produced by our engineered E. coli.
In addition, we conducted the RNA degradation test which turn out that the protein possesses ribonuclease
activity as we expected.
In future applications, the product we get may have two directions of develop, but
all in the clinical medicine aspect. One is to directly invent a new drug with the protein product of this
gene and the other one is to explore its pharmacology regarding the relevant diseases which could be used to
develop more new drugs.
The first kind of drug may have an effect on adjusting the nerve system, treating
diseases like inflammation and the further developed drugs may be a possible treatment of some present
incurable diseases such as PD and tumor. However, the overuse of ANG will also overpromote the generation of
endothelial cells and vessels and may even cause cancer in some situations, so the correct usage of this
drug shall be also necessary for being studied.
Market Survey
According to relevant data, among the 65-year-olds, one in ten people are
Parkinson's disease patients; among the 85-year-olds, the number of people who have Parkinson's disease
reaches 30%-50%. The research progress and molecular biological characteristics of Angiopoietin and its
related proteins are reviewed. So far, four kinds of Angiopoietin and some isoforms or variants of
Angiopoietin have been discovered. These proteins have a common structure: a signal peptide related to
secretion at the amino terminus, a helix-like domain that mediates homo-oligomers, and a fibrinogen-like
domain that mediates ligand activity at the carboxyl terminus.
Marketing Plan
The theory we have resulted in a unique product (but not medicine), which will be
studied and researched by staff members in the collaborated pharmaceutical company), and the final medical
products will be entirely produced and owned by the partner company. The outcome of our company remains with
unknown effects on medicine. However, the result will be owned by our target group (pharmaceutical company).
We will market our product using many different ways. For example, online surveys,
email marketing, mobile marketing, and social media marketing are considered the cheapest among all types of
marketing. Since we are a brand new company, we do not have many budgets available for us, so we would
consider the ways I listed above first. Once we have more budget allowed, we might try other ways of
marketing our product. For example, printed marketing materials, such as brochures, flyers, business cards,
etc. We can also try trade shows and other marketing that cost some money.
Challenges
During the experimental work, the main challenges were the plasmid DNA extraction
and the protein purification process. One aspect of the difficulty is the continuous low concentration of
plasmid DNA when we first extracted them. But as we navigate through and become more familiar with the long
process, we successfully extracted with an ideal concentration.
Moreover, heterologous overexpression often results in low expression levels and
inactive protein due to insufficient membrane insertion and folding or lack of post-translational
modifications. And over-expression of membrane proteins can be toxic to the cell. Nevertheless, eventually,
we obtained the freeze-dried protein powder. But with no doubt, we will further solidify this part of the
work.
Before our product come into a real application, there are still some concerns regarding our Angiogenin
protein. We need to conduct more experiments and tests to further ensure its purity, stability and
biological activity. In addition, we would further focus on the yield issues, storage conditions and how to
use our products to determine the dose of curing some present incurable diseases.