A word from the IHP Leader – Personal Reflection

The proverbial “experience is the best teacher” is one that I greatly resonate with. Before joining our school‘s iGEM team, I tended to shy away from leadership roles; and in retrospect, I realize it’d been due to my fear of failure. Given my background, it didn't come as a surprise when I found our schedules chaotic and deadlines looming. Having been the IHP leader for close to a year now, I’ve realized my inadequacies and am striving for improvement.
When I think of leadership, I imagine someone of resilience, strength, empathy, and insurmountable compassion. Everyone has good days and bad days, and my teammates are no exception. Oftentimes, what they need most is a helping hand, rather than an extra assignment. This is something I try to accommodate, which some may argue is my weakness, but a trait of which I consider my strength.
Joining iGEM has truly been one of the most rewarding decisions of my life. Not only have I gotten the opportunity to meet all these amazing, hardworking, intelligent people, but also a chance to improve myself and really open my eyes to the possibilities and wonders of synthetic biology.
Our HKSSC iGEM team has worked so incredibly hard, and I‘m truly, truly proud of what we‘ve achieved.
Lastly, I‘d like to end with a few words of wisdom: “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”.

Introduction

One of our core beliefs for this project is to help people – to contribute to our community and the world. We’ve seen that the uncontaminated waters around us pose an alarming threat of spreading Leptospira without many people being aware, therefore our main goal is to lower the death risk by preventive measures through lab work and IHP work. We have concluded that farmers, pets and pet owners have a relatively high risk of infection due to their frequent contact with contaminated waters, so both our product and our awareness spreading is aimed at them. In order to optimize our assistance, the IHP department conducted interviews to better understand their situation to help us help them, and raised awareness through different activities to teach them the importance of preventive measures while cooperating with the lab department to make out a solution. The following will be the summaries of IHP work throughout the year.

Survey

In order to better understand the extent of knowledge our peers and teachers had of Leptospirosis and other waterborne diseases, as well as preventative measures they implemented into their lives, our team decided to conduct a survey.

Our findings include:
• Many pets have not been vaccinated (65.5%)
• Most people who play water sports do not take any safety measures before or after (61.9%)
• Many people (73.1%) were concerned about the lack of cure and high death rate of Leptospirosis
• Our solution is useful and would alleviate people’s concerns greatly, since many people (83.6%) would have less concerns if our team created a solution to cure Leptospirosis.

Interviews with local pet owner

One of the main parties at risk of infection are pets. Therefore, interviewing them can allow us to get a better idea of their current preventive measures and routines against Leptospira. This helps us to help them. Meeting with local pet owners (August):
In Zoom interviews with pet owners, we explored the process of acquiring a pet and the associated health and safety precautions. One of the owners described the purchasing experience as straightforward, noting that the pet store managed all aspects of the transaction after she and her parents completed some necessary paperwork. However, she expressed a lack of awareness regarding the specific vaccinations her dog had received, revealing that the pet store handled all vaccination protocols without her involvement. Notably, she was unfamiliar with the existence of leptospirosis, highlighting a lack of knowledge in mammalian exposure to this disease that was common amongst pet owners we interviewed. About pet health and safety, another owner outlined several daily precautions she implements in order to mitigate the risk of her dog contracting pet-related diseases. These measures include wiping the dog’s paws after each outdoor walk to remove contaminants and regularly cleaning his ears to maintain hygiene. Additionally, she stated that she either brushes her dog’s teeth or provides him with treats designed to promote oral hygiene. These discussions highlight the necessity for pet owners to be safely informed about both the purchasing process and ongoing health management, to ensure the well-being of their pets; as well as the knowledge gap they have about Leptospirosis and its fatality.

Interview with local pet store

As we found out during the interview with local pet owners, the pet stores are in charge of vaccinations and other protocols. Thus, our team decided to interview pet stores to find out more about the current existing preventive measures taken on leptospira.
Meeting with local pet stores (September):
In in-person interviews with local pet stores, our team delved into the aspects of hygiene and diseases taken by pet stores, which included: vaccination and medication regulations, preventive measures taken to reduce contamination risks, advice for first-time pet owners etc. We realized that the vast majority of pet store owners were uninformed of leptospirosis. Although they take precautionary measures, including cleaning the cages regularly, vaccinating pets according to protocol, and quarantining sick animals, we think the measures they take barely scrape the surface of what can be done. This again reminds us of the importance of spreading awareness to protect pets and their owners.

Attempts on interviewing local farmers

Our team tried our very best and reached out to several local farmers in Hong Kong to gain more insights regarding awareness of leptospirosis. We invited them for online interviews or phone calls and aimed to dig deeper into farmer’s general knowledge on leptospirosis.
Unfortunately, all farmers rejected the interview due to their lack of knowledge on water contamination, leptospirosis and diseases in general. This further highlights the importance of spreading awareness of leptospirosis to the general public, especially farmers, as leptospirosis may cause fatality. With that said, we hope that our project can make a difference to not only our community, but to the world.

Meetings with professors

Our team met up with several professors from different fields to obtain invaluable opinions, new ideas and redirections whenever stuck to improve our project.

Meeting with Prof. Jiang XIA.

Our team had a meeting with Prof. Jiang XIA, where we caught up with downstream work from last year’s project, and discussed our project this year on leptospira. It helped us a lot in the brainstorming and starting stage of our project.

Meeting with professors at the Hong Kong University (HKU):

Our team met with Dr Michael Chan, the owner of the HKU lab, and Dr John, aiming to seek advice on our project ideas. We initially planned to use miRNAs to combat the leptospira protein, but after this meeting, we learnt that this solution was not feasible, which led to us changing our plan to the one we’re working on now. This meeting was crucial to our project development, as it guided us into the correct direction. Dr John has also provided us with lab protocols and a lab in the HKU to work in with better equipment. This meeting acted as a turning point in our project and was what laid the foundation of our project design.

Online meeting with a professor from BGI Genomics (July):

Our team reached out to a Chinese mainland company named BGI Genomics, seeking advice regarding our choice of wet lab implementation. During the call, we explored the advantages and disadvantages of different implementation methods, and the professor specifically recommended using viral vectors. However, due to other considerations, such as time constraints, we did not use viral vectors in the end. Despite this, we gained valuable research skills and ways of thinking that are guaranteed to assist us in future projects, such as doing other Mainland Chinese students and setting up a network for the future.

Meeting with CUHK SBS iGEM Team:

Our team met with the CUHK SBS iGEM team, aiming to gain engineering advice since their project last year also used exosomes with miRNA constructs. Through this meeting, we were able to confirm that exosomes are the best form of implementation for our project.

Meeting with Dr Audrey Lai at the Hong Kong University (August):

Our team reached out to Dr Audrey Lai from the HKU, where we showed her our promotion video. She gave us constructive feedback on graphics, character design and presentation skills, which not only helped elevate our video, but also gave us the opportunity to integrate these skills into our presentation at the Jamboree.