Team:Shanghai United HS/Implementation
Implementation
Overview
Nowadays, a common problem is that few people are willing to spend some time
brushing their teeth due to the lack of importance they attached to cleaning their mouths, so there are not
so many people who want to use the Bass’s method which is the most official method people brush their teeth.
The result is that many people can’t clean their teeth completely, which leads to the remaining of harmful
bacteria in their teeth, and further causes dental caries problems. According to the 2017 China Health
News[1], the teeth-repairing market in China is large. In China, 98.4% senior citizens, 88.1% adults, 29%
teens, 66% children have teeth decay problem. However, Dr. Phage has a strong cleaning ability due to ClyR,
which means people don’t have to spend a lot of time on brushing their teeth using the Bass method. And in
the meantime, they can make their teeth cleaner
1.Who are your proposed end users?
The main customer group is children suffering from tooth decay. Bacteriophages
mainly target at the negative bacteria, S. mutans and S.sobrinus, that cause tooth decay. At the same time,
Oral symbiotic bacteria, including Streptococcus sanguinis, Streptococcus oralis, Streptococcus salivarius,
are not injured. This means that bacteriophage do not worsen the oral cavity of Children. So parents can
purchase bacteriophage products for their children if children suffers from tooth decay. In fact,
bacteriophages can eliminate negative bacteria at early stage, preventing deterioration in time, so in
addition to children who suffer from teeth decay, it is better for people with healthy teeth to adopt it.
2.How do you envision others using your project?
Currently, people have enormous bias and misunderstandings about the fact that
bacteria, such as
Bacteriophages, are used in treatment. Bacteriophages, which sound terrifying and dirty, play an essential
role in treating tooth decay. Thus people can learn from this project that bacteria are reasonable to be
adopted in treatment. In certain content, some bacteria may even be the most suitable solution. Ultimately,
the misunderstandings should be reduced and increasing population are accepting this fact.
3.How would you implement your project in the real world?
For our product, Dr. Phage, its proposed end users are the patients who are suffering from their dental
caries problems. Since the peripheral product of our team is a tube of toothpaste with a toothbrush. The
reason why we choose toothpaste and toothbrush is that there are billions of people using toothpaste and
toothbrush, so our target audience will be super large. Our vision forour core product is to put the
toothpaste we invented onto the toothbrush we sell, and then customers could brush their teeth as they
normally do, but with our toothbrush. Toothpastes with bacteriophages have the ability to solve these
problems efficiently. Since bacteriophages contain lyase, a chemical substance which is able to dispel
bacteria. When researchers put lyase in probiotics and induce this combination to duplicate lyase, therefore
negative bacteria can be eliminated in short time. During the process, only negative bacteria are wiped out
as bacteriophages do not damage other symbiotic bacteria. Plus, toothpastes are daily needs. Thus selling
toothpastes with bacteriophages is doable. The product should start working after a few minutes, so we
suggest the users to gargle after 2-3 minutes. Since children cannot visit dentists themselves and are
unaware how to protect their teeth, parents need to utilize partial time to take their children to dentists.
The key target audience for our product is children, and we will pack the toothpaste into normal tubes, like
those we usually see in the supermarket. There are only one safety concerns we would need to consider: our
product could not be swallowed, since swallowed toothpaste will cause our teeth’s erosion due to high amount
of fluoride contained in the toothpaste, which is not something we want to see. The challenge that we need
to consider is the market acceptance. Since Dr. Phage is a new company, people will be worried about the
potential safety issues of our products, and their worries will keep them away from those products. One way
to solve this challenge is to strengthen people’s knowledge on phagelyases.
4.Our progress
We have created the engineering E. coli strain containing ClyR gene and Arab gene.
The a-L-arabinofuranosidase encoded by the AraB gene is expressed outside the cell, where it reacted with
hemicellulose. Thereafter, the enzyme hydrolyzes the hemicellulose into monosaccharide, arabinose, which
could induce the expression of the other gene, ClyR to further secret enzyme then lyse the membrane of
Gram-positive oral bacteria.
Based on the amount of ClyR expression in the supernatant of our solution, the experiment has yielded
positive results during the Vitro activity analysis. The working system of the bioengineered probiotic is
validated and as anticipated, possessing the ability to eliminate Gram-positive bacteria in the oral cavity.
5. Selling points & Selling Channels & Plans
First, toothpastes with bacteriophages help people save money,since our product
“Dr.Phage” costs 50-120 yuan to fix all broken teeth, but repairing a single tooth with surgery costs
400-500 yuan. Thus buying our toothpastes is more economical.
Second, toothpastes with bacteriophages are safer than surgery,because some accidents may occur during
surgery, causing deterioration like inflammation. However, layse in bacteriophages do not hurt symbiotic
tissues based on the research. Therefore, the risks of toothpastes are less than surgery.
In order to sell toothpastes, we plan to set online shops to spread the toothpastes. At the same time, we
will diffuse information about this special toothpaste through Twitter, Tiktok, etc. When we reach a certain
scale, we would initiate to enlarge our scales, selling products in physical stores like supermarkets,
gradually occupying more market shares. As we grow stronger enough and are able to take more risks, we will
start to trade globally
Reference:
[1]Fuhe News 2012.09.18 Dental caries commonly known as tooth decay, the prevalence
of dental caries in my country's adults is as high as 88% https://news.fh21.com.cn/zt/qmayr/327272.html