World Alzheimer’s Month: a personal thank you to iGEM
“Our value lies in what we are and what we have been, not in our ability to recite the recent past.”
September is World Alzheimer’s Month, a time to raise awareness and challenge the stigma and misinformation that surrounds Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Alzheimer’s is a disease that hits close to home for me. My mother was diagnosed with dementia of Alzheimer’s type relatively late in life. She's now 87-years old and no longer recognizes me as her daughter, but she is happy and fun to be around. My brother-in-law had early onset Alzheimer’s and died last year at the age of 65.
10 warning signs of dementia, by Alzheimer’s Disease International.
In recognition of World Alzheimer’s Month, my family and I would like to express our heartfelt thanks for the progress many iGEM teams have made over the years in engineering biological solutions for tackling Alzheimer’s disease.
Nottingham 2020 (United Kingdom) engineered a clostridia-based therapeutic to increase the amount of D-β-hydroxybutyrate reaching neurons in the brain, helping to delay the onset of neurodegenerative diseases. Gold Medalist, Nominated for Best Therapeutics Project and Best Model, Undergraduate Division.
XJTLU-CHINA 2019 (China) aimed to save astrocytes from high glutamate levels at the early stage of neurodegenerative disease and to strengthen the defense against neurotoxicity. Gold Medalist, Undergraduate Division.
UC_San Diego 2019 (United States) aimed to develop a panel of antibodies to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease years before its onset by detecting immunologic changes in peripheral blood. Undergraduate Division.
McMaster 2018 (Canada) engineered human amyloid beta protein variants in E. coli as a system for studying the molecular basis of aggregation, leading to a better understanding of neurodegenerative diseases. Bronze Medalist, Undergraduate Division.
Linkoping_Sweden 2017 (Sweden) optimized the expression of fusion proteins containing a fluorescent marker and the Amyloid-Beta or Tau proteins which are known to be linked to the development of Alzheimer's disease. Silver Medalist, Overgraduate Division.
JNFLS_China 2016 (China) created a prototype of a quantitative, simple and cheap Alzheimer's disease monitoring device. Silver Medalist, High School Division.
TU-Eindhoven 2016 (Netherlands) engineered scaffold proteins that could be used to control the expression of the klotho protein as a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Gold Medalist, Nominated for Best New Application Project, Best Model and Best New Basic Part, Undergraduate Division.
UCL 2016 (United Kingdom) designed a biological system to target the causes of ageing as a means to address age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's. Gold Medalist, Nominated for Best Therapeutics Project, Best Entrepreneurship and Best New Composite Part, Undergraduate Division.
MIT 2014 (United States) developed a detection system to diagnose Alzheimer's disease, using beta-amyloid oligomer-specific, transmembrane receptors to detect the presence of beta-amyloid oligomers. Gold Medalist, Undergraduate Division.
UCL 2013 (United Kingdom) devised a genetic circuit for transfection into microglia in order to boost their ability to break down the senile plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Gold Medalist, Undergraduate Division.
ESBS Strausbourg 2010 (France) designed the ProteoLux Pro system in order to study the mechanism of Tau fragmentation and bring new insights in the mechanisms of the Alzheimer disease. Bronze Medalist, Undergraduate Division.
We are grateful for the creativity and hard work of all iGEM teams in using the tools of synthetic biology to better understand human disease, and to develop new diagnostics and therapeutic approaches to help people live healthier lives.
