Difference between revisions of "Team:NCKU Tainan/Entrepreneurship"

Overview

This year, iGEM NCKU Tainan is focusing on therapeutics. Our Oh My Gut project aims to tackle a problem which is still unknown to many people. We are using synthetic biology to create a comprehensive solution to solve the problem of p-Cresol accumulation in CKD patients, to reduce the risks of getting cardiovascular diseases or other serious complications and help them achieve a better quality of life. We wanted to realize our project from the laboratory and apply it in the real market. Oh My Gut provides solutions to improve the quality of lives of people by setting up an affordable healthcare platform to increase the accessibility to anyone who requires medical advice, attention and products.

To bring our vision and mission into reality, engaging with our customers and stakeholders is crucial. We started with mapping out our target users, which are CKD patients and stakeholders. At first, we proposed that our engineered E. coli Nissle 1917 that possesses the ability to reduce p-Cresol accumulation can be marketed as a probiotic. However, after discussing with Taiwan Food and Drug Administration, we realized that because our product contains pharmacological effects, we need to market it as a drug. Therefore, we decided on marketing our product as a living therapeutic drug called CreSolve. Aside from a living therapeutic drug, we also designed CreSense, a medical device to help measure blood p-Cresol level using our engineered p-Cresol sensing bacteria.

We are very proud that our Oh My Gut project is able to evolve into CreSolve and CreSense which despite being two different products with different business models, all fall under one same goal. CreSolve living therapeutic drug will be directly sold to our distributors, while CreSense will be leased out to healthcare platforms and apply a recurring revenue business model to the suppliance of bacteria refills and microfluidic disc.

In order to understand how therapeutic drugs and medical devices can enter the real market, we started at the bottom, discussing the value proposition of the products and understanding customer’s needs. We subsequently conducted market and competitor research, thoughtfully devise our business model, and wrote our business plan. We aim to interpret the value of our products into a commercial business.