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Life talk from Wu Siu Hong
We are honoured to have invited famous tin-pin bowling athlete, the winner of the 2015 QubicaAMF Bowling World Cup, Mr Wu to a truly meaningful and inspiring life talk, at which he shared with us his journey of fighting against testicular cancer. He has considerably contributed to the designing stage of our engineering cycle by sharing his thought-provoking journey, inspiring us to investigate a way to both detect prostate cancer and cure it in the meantime. We were all deeply touched by his extraordinary perseverance and are determined to accomplish our project to help more cancer patients worldwide.
We have definitely gained a much deeper insight into the life of a cancer patient. However, due to time limitations, it is not as in-depth as we have expected.
Learn:
We therefore, organised a workshop with the Hong Kong Anti-Cancer Society to both gain a much deeper insight into their lives and struggles, better bridging the gap between our understanding and their reality.
Meeting with former iGEM team
Our school has participated in the iGEM competition several times. Through cooperation with the former team, we can learn about how to understand the value in synthetic biology from the iGEM competition. More importantly, we can learn from their mistakes (wetlab failure, impurity aroused from protein extraction and low concentration of protein resulted) and overcome those challenges. They have contributed to the designing step of our engineering cycle by sharing their experiences in using protein for the project and getting undesirable results, prompting us to switch to using genes this year. Their advice helped boost our confidence and morale.
Public survey
As part of our goal to investigate the knowledge of the general public on prostate cancer, we conducted a public survey through Google Form. Since February, our team has received approximately 90 responses from people of different walks of lives, with 56 male respondents and 30 female respondents. Below shows the statistics of our survey.
While most (68%) are able to locate the prostate, only half (56%) acknowledge the symptoms of prostate cancers. This demonstrates that the general public have insufficient attention on prostate cancer, prompting us to raise awareness for prostate cancer.4
For the expected cost of prostate cancer screenings, a majority (63%) of respondents believed the cost to be below HKD $5,000. It is believed that the reason for only 40% of respondents regularly conducting a body check is mainly due to the high cost and inconvenience of body check. This inspires us to develop a low-cost test kit for prostate cancer.
Mr. Lau from Yan Oi Tong Tin Ka Ping Secondary School
We are honoured to receive generous assistance from Mr. Paul Lau, an experienced teacher at Yan Oi Tong Tin Ka Ping Secondary School. Mr. Lau had a leading role in the first iGEM team from Hong Kong. Working in close cooperation with such a pioneer has offered us invaluable insights and suggestions about our projection procedures and guidance on our experimental approach. Mr Lau contributed to the building step of our engineering cycle by training us in the biology field through conducting a lecturing talk, he has also taught us some experimental skills and guided us how to do troubleshooting in gel purification and ligation, which greatly assisted us in facilitating the progress and process of our experiment.
Mr Lau contributes to the build and testing stage of our research work. We have done a lot of literature review to decide the multicistronic plasmid and discussed the feasibility of the functional role of the gene. During the testing stage, we have revised substantially lab techniques for cloning the gene.
Learn:
We amended our protocols, gave Mr. Lau feedback on the challenges we had overcome and discussed our troubleshooting process.
Goethe University Frankfurt
We worked with their iGEM team for the exchange of ideas and mutual support. We have held a plethora of online meetings with them to discuss the current state of cancer in our society. Their team has vastly contributed to the building step of our engineering cycle through sharing their difficulties, we have also shared our experiences and advice with each other, improving both teams’ projects .
Incorporating our understanding and discoveries on prostate cancer with their app, SOLAR, both teams can enhance the scope of our respective projects. The app provides us with valuable info when choosing an appropriate sunscreen to prevent skin cancer, real-time UV index notifications and facts related to various forms of cancer. Our team has also assisted in translating the app into Chinese, which we hope will make it accessible to a wider range of users. We exchange our research proposed ideas to figure out any misconception in designing the plasmid.
For the building and testing stage for the apps of the games, we have organised multiple meetings with their team to spot any bugs and misconfiguration of the game design . Integrating our online game into their own app, successfully extending our project’s reach internationally.
Instagram page launch
In order to build a better connection between our team and society, we have launched a social media page dedicated to posting materials regarding prostate cancer. The aim of our social media page is to provide facts to dispel common misconceptions surrounding the disease. Our approach towards raising awareness among people at risk is to target their younger family members. Seeing as how prostate cancer is often a touchy subject for men. We hope that by educating teenagers on starting a conversation with their family members, the topic would be less of a taboo but rather a genuine health concern that can be openly discussed. We have printed and distributed cue cards that could help teens with initiating a conversation based on facts and one’s care for their loved ones.
We launched an Instagram page dedicated to posting content about prostate cancer, aiming to build a better connection between our team and other teens.
Bayer
We are truly honoured to have Bayer as the mentor for our prostate cancer project. Their professional advice and insightful suggestions on conducting presentations and experiments have not only reinforced our scientific knowledge on prostate cancer significantly, but also inspired our project into what it is today. Their support has been instrumental in guiding our development and ensuring our success. We have worked with Bayer to refine our Year 9 curriculum to provide an accurate portrayal of the drug life cycle, encouraging us to develop an inquiring mind and find our own answers through critical thinking.
Through this unique collaboration, our research has become more meaningful and in-depth. This experience has broadened our horizons and given us the confidence to engage with the science impacting the lives of prostate cancer patients.
We believe science plays an important part of our lives and as members of society, we share a responsibility in contributing to the advancements that will shape our collective future.
Supported By
Design:
To obtain inclusive prostate cancer education for our project that helps build the foundation for a positive relationship between science and storytelling.
Build:
During our visit to Bayer, we implemented the OBITAN framework (Objective, Background, Issue, Thinking, Action, Next Step), which has greatly streamlined our presentations. Also, they suggested we should use MTT assay for counting the number of cells and measure the cell activities such as apoptosis.
Test:
After our visit to Bayer, we have frequently presented our project to teachers and students. Each presentation has provided valuable feedback, enabling us to continuously refine our work.
Learn:
Professional storytelling advice has accelerated our skills. We have learnt to prioritise the audiences over content for better engagement.
Education program
Our team designed an education program for students from Years 7 to 9 (Referring to Education Page). This program aims to enhance the scientific literacy among the youth, and show that synthetic biology is not as complicated as commonly believed, interesting young students into joining the world of synthetic biology in the future.
Through this program, students will also learn that many diseases are caused genetically, and that through synthetic biology, these diseases can be cured.
General public talk
We have invited the general public from all walks of life to participate in our talk. In this talk, we have shared the skills and techniques on how to encourage others to have prostate cancer screening. We wish to extend our reach to more people outside of the school and hope to raise awareness of the general public and encourage early diagnosis of prostate cancer, further promoting scientific literacy among the society.
A general public talk is essential to bringing in the community. Also as a part of iGEM’s commitment to spreading scientific literacy.
Implementing changes based on comments and anonymous survey feedback from the audience, we have reflected on our delivery and materials used.
Learn:
We didn't expect everyone to have a high level of scientific literacy. Through this talk, we hope that people will have enhanced scientific literacy and will learn to screen for cancer early in advance in their future, hence reducing public health expenditure.
Considering diverse perspectives is valuable when striving for growth. We identified areas for potential improvement and enhanced the quality of our project.Seminars such as these should be conducted in more accessible environments in order to increase attendance. Some who were invited did not show up due to time constraints, this acts as a reminder for future teams to choose more notable locations such as town halls when organising such public talks.
Dr Yu from G.T. (Ellen Yeung) College
Our team had the opportunity to meet Dr. Yu at G.T. (Ellen Yeung) College, where we engaged in meaningful and inspiring discussions with her on utilising the instrument Luminescence plate reader to determine the luminance and laser scanning microscope to visualise the green fluorescence protein (GFP).
Dr Yu contributed to the testing stage in our engineering cycle by teaching us how to look for autofluorescence when measuring fluorescence given out by GFP. She also taught us to check for false positive results by comparing a black and white picture of the cells with the sample, using parameters such as the sizes of the cells to confirm if the cell is really a cancer cell. From our experience learning from the mistake we have made before, we also offer an insight on measuring the flash assay, it is not necessary to read the plate one-by-one as well as choose a specific wavelength for the luminance. Some of the flash assays with its half-life of about half hour.
Hong Kong Anti-Cancer Society: Workshop with patients
We also organised a sharing session with cancer patients to better understand their needs and concerns about cancer. This provided us with an invaluable chance to have a deeper and better insight into the daily life of a cancer patient, which further strengthened our determination and commitment to developing a new and effective way to diagnose and cure cancer.
Moreover, we invited our school band (serve as music therapy) to perform, aiming to provide our participants with a moment of joy and serenity through a live musical performance. We believe that music can be a way to relieve stress and provide them with a relaxed environment in which to discuss their experiences with us.
We sincerely hope to promote the importance of early cancer diagnosis by sharing real-life experiences from cancer patients. Through this collaboration, not only have we learnt about their difficulties and adjusted our product to fit more realistic demands, but we can also raise awareness and encourage proactive health measures. Additionally, we strive to provide a supportive and uplifting environment, demonstrating our care and concern by offering joyful and relaxing experiences for patients and their families.
Collaboration with the iGEM team from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
We are privileged to have the opportunity to collaborate with the iGEM team from HKUST on experimental skills and approaches. They have generously provided us with a multimode plate reader for luminance detection in the testing stage, which substantially enhances the validity of our experimental results on how to increase the cloning chances (Referring to the Wetlab Notes). They contributed to the building step of our engineering cycle through sharing their difficulties, advice and suggestions were also shared between the two teams.
This collaboration boosts effectiveness for our project and has a more accurate result.
