About Us

iErazer is a diverse team dedicated to reducing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The team members come from many colleges and majors, including the College of Life Sciences, College of Mathematical Sciences, College of Arts and so on. The main members are the third and fourth year undergraduate students.

Team Building

At the beginning of 2024, Li Hanwen, one of the original initiators of the team, found that some small molecules had an inhibitory effect on the inflammation of mouse macrophages induced by Salmonella. Combined with the pathology of inflammatory bowel disease, he believes that these peptides can also exert an anti-inflammatory effect in the gut. However, after thinking about and consulting the relevant literature, Li Hanwen found that there are many problems. First, the peptides cannot directly enter the intestine orally. Even if they are wrapped in capsules, the peptides are extremely changeable and their activity is difficult to maintain. The second is that peptides cannot stay in the gut for a long time, which also limits the role of peptides.

We first formed a small team of only a few people, which was also the prototype of the wet experiment group.

After a general discussion, we decided to introduce synthetic elements of peptides into the microorganism using synthetic biology. At the same time, we found an adhesion factor that allows the polypeptide to adhere on the intestinal surface. In order to reasonably evaluate the role of polypeptides, we decided to adopt the mathematical modeling method, so we contacted Chen Junru, Chen Yibin and other students, who were responsible for the construction of the mathematical model.After that, they formed the dry experimental group together with the new students.

In order to expand the influence of our project, we also set up a social publicity and research group.

At this point, a persons flash of inspiration has become a teams goal.

Team Collaboration

In the early days of the teamwork team, we faced many problems. First, the cross-department cooperation is difficult, and the team is faced with communication barriers caused by professional differences. To this end, we optimized the communication mode of the team, held regular in-group communication meetings, and built a file sharing platform. Through regular stage summary meetings, not only the project objectives and milestones of each stage were defined, but also a good communication mechanism and trust foundation were established.

Since we all have courses, rotating the experiments is our only option. By sharing documents online, we recorded the daily experimental operations and procedures in detail, so that everyone can get familiar with the progress and quickly confirm their own work. The reasonable division of labor and rigorous process helped us to scientifically and reasonably obtain the data needed for the dry experiment group. After mathematical modeling and analysis, we confirmed the effect of the candidate polypeptides, and further conducted the in vivo experiments in mice. In a complex and volatile project environment, cooperation is the key to success. Only through effective communication, cross-domain collaboration and extensive public engagement can challenges be overcome and the stated goals of projects achieved.