Our team has designed and implemented a series of educational activities to raise public awareness about oncology, cancer, and our innovative probiotic-targeted anti-tumor therapies. These activities include social media campaigns, community education, product research, and storybook development. In terms of social media, we publish popular science content through platforms such as XiaoHongshu, introducing the causes of cancer, various treatment methods and our projects, aiming to fill the public's knowledge gap on tumor and probiotic-targeted therapies. We also run interactive sessions with primary school students in community centers, where they learn about scientific concepts such as cell function, tumor formation and genetic modification through storytelling, building block games and knowledge talks. At the same time, we conducted a product survey at the Beijing Science Center to gather public opinions on tumor prevention, probiotics and our program, and took the opportunity to introduce our research in detail to a younger audience. In addition, we have developed a storybook that personifies complex concepts such as cells, cancer cells and probiotics to make them more accessible to children and adolescents. The feedback we received during our community education activities led us to further refine the content of the storybook, ensuring that the language is accessible and enhancing its appeal through lively storylines. These educational activities have succeeded in raising public awareness of our projects and stimulating the interest of the younger generation in biology and healthy living in a fun and easy-to-understand way, promoting the popularization of scientific knowledge in the community.

The purpose of our social media promotion is to let more people know about our products and to explain tumor and cancer-related knowledge to the public. This extensive explanation is necessary because, based on the data we collected in the questionnaire, on a scale of 1 to 10 (1: Not at all, 10: Very much), 70% of people think they know about tumors on a scale of 1 to 4 (not very well). And almost 80% of people have never heard of probiotic anti-tumor targeted therapy (our program). In addition, through our interviews with experts on anti-tumor drugs, he said that many tumor patients do not have a correct understanding of the tumor, resulting in unnecessary panic and psychological pressure. Therefore, our social media and offline promotion aims to popularize the basic information about tumors and cancer to the public, help more people look at tumors and cancer in a realistic manner, and reduce unnecessary panic. At the same time, we promote our own products to let more people know about this relatively new treatment (probiotic-targeted anti-tumor drugs).

As previously mentioned, our social media promotion and education efforts are primarily divided into two major parts: introducing our products to the public and introducing and popularizing oncology and cancer knowledge. Our social media content is segmented into topics on the causes of tumors and cancer, various treatment options, their advantages and disadvantages, as well as preventive measures. We have posted some educational posters on Xiaohongshu. We primarily introduced the current mainstream treatment methods, as well as our project's targeted therapy method, in the form of picture books to enhance interest, making the explanations more easily accessible and appealing to the public.

So far, we have received some feedback on our social media and offline popularization activities. Among them, offline science popularization has been loved by the target audience due to the picture book storytelling approach. They said: “The story is very interesting. For example, the tumor is compared to a tumor monster, and chemotherapy is compared to a grenade. It makes people want to listen.” In terms of knowledge, participants also reported that "biological knowledge that was previously difficult to understand became interesting because of the fun way it was presented, with stories and activities interspersed throughout the information," and we were pleasantly surprised by the feedback we received online. Our posters have been viewed by many people, many of whom want to know more about cancer and tumors, such as how different types of cancer are treated. Overall, the feedback we received was positive, indicating that our science popularization efforts were very successful.

We implemented an event to educate some teenagers in the community center about the danger of tumors and some knowledge about our topic. This event took place in the community center. The participants of this event are mostly students from primary school and they haven’t learned about tumors before. This meets the purpose of our lesson today, which is teaching them what are tumors, cancers, and genetic modification are.

We designed an interesting story to help the students understand the function of cells and what cancer is. In the story, we first explained the functions of cells in our bodies, like the function of repairing the body and supporting the whole body. After that, we compared the body cells to villagers and compared the cancer cells to the monsters. We also explained how the cancer cells metastasize in the body. After this, we asked the students how we kill the monsters, and they answered us about the use of chemical medication and other cancer treatments. We explained that these treatments would damage other villagers, and introduced our method of targeting the monster and killing the monster without hurting the villagers.

We also designed a game to help them understand DNA, RNA, and proteins. We bought some blocks for them to play with, and we wrote some rules on the board. The rules showed how two colors are grouped, and the students should find the order of building the blocks. This symbolizes the relationship between DNA and RNA.

Other than telling the story and playing the game with the students, we also taught them some knowledge about tumors and genetic modification. We first introduced what is cell division. We also asked the students what would happen if our body cells lived forever and divided. They answered with a mix of curiosity and concern. Some students said that if cells kept dividing without stopping, our bodies would keep growing bigger and bigger. Others thought that it might lead to overcrowding inside our bodies. A few students even guessed that something bad might happen, like getting sick.

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As we used many funny stories and examples, like using grenades to kill the monsters, the students were all very engaged. We collected comments from the students and found that they were all attracted by how we combined the knowledge and the story. After the lesson, we expected the students to understand the importance of being healthy and having healthy living habits. 

We visited the Beijing Science Center with the goal of learning more about cells and cancer, as well as interviewing visitors. We aimed to gather feedback on our project, traditional tumor treatments, tumor prevention, and any suggestions they might have. Additionally, we sought to raise awareness about cancer and tumors, as the Science Center provides a great opportunity to engage with teenagers who are passionate about science. It is a space where mutual learning occurs. The participants of our survey are mainly young kids around 6-16 years old, that’s because we were conducting this survey in the Science Center.

We first designed a poster with four questions, each offering four correct choices. We simply asked which one they preferred the most, while using the poster to help reinforce their knowledge. The four questions and choices are shown in the picture below:

We asked 12 people and recorded their feedback. The results indicate that most of them prioritize healthy living habits as the key to preventing tumors. Probiotics were generally familiar to them, with the majority believing that probiotics promote digestive health and boost the immune system. In terms of combining probiotics with tumor drugs, participants agreed that this could enhance the efficiency of the treatment and reduce side effects. However, concerns were raised about the reliability of probiotics, with respondents suggesting that proving their effectiveness through experiments is crucial to gaining consumer trust.

According to this feedback, we noticed that young people rarely hear about the use of probiotics in tumor drugs and only a very small number of them really know the major functions of probiotics in our bodies. So we were also explaining how we are using probiotics in our project, which is using probiotics as a promoter and sending the drugs to the tumors.

Previous surveys revealed that the understanding of tumors among approximately 36.26% of people is below basic, with scores often ranging from one to two out of seven. Notably, 78.47% of respondents had never heard of probiotic-targeted tumor therapies and expressed concerns about the effects of this novel treatment on the human body. Our survey predominantly included individuals under 18 years old (41.18%), and information about tumors typically does not appear in textbooks before senior high school, which is part of the nine-year compulsory education.

Since the storybook was designed as an interesting story for children and teenagers, we personified the main characters concluded in the process: cells as normal residents in Health City (human body); cancer cells as tumor monsters (cells that uncontrollably turn into cancer cells); and probiotics as the guards and experts who work in Health City.

Based on feedback received from our community education efforts, we recognized that some students found certain concepts in our storybook unclear or difficult to understand. To address this, we made targeted improvements to the storybook, refining the explanations of complex ideas and simplifying the language where needed.

The significance of these educational activities is that they effectively bridge the gap between scientific research and public awareness, especially in emerging therapeutic areas such as cancer and probiotic-targeted therapies. Through social media, community engagement, and creative storytelling, we not only educate the public, but also gain valuable feedback that helps us optimize our communications strategy. The success of storybooks and interactive courses shows that the use of vivid narratives to explain complex concepts is particularly appropriate for younger audiences. These efforts not only increase awareness for our programs, but also inspire broader biological interest and health awareness, contributing to building a more health-aware and concerned society.