Team:NCKU Tainan/Human Practices
Overview
Most of the time, different perspectives on the same thing can create a different feeling, maybe satisfied, appreciated, but may also be questioned or puzzled. We were engaged in doing experiments, finding research, discussing with each other every day, however, whether others outside the world would be in agreement with our ideas? Have we been able to improve our project more comprehensively? If bringing people from all kinds of backgrounds together to inspect our project, various challenges from the real world could be faced, to make our technique perfect a step ahead of time before applying it to society. By doing so, ensuring our project could benefit the public and contribute to society.
As a result, integrated human practice became a vital activity for us to seek outward assistance, not only to optimize our technique but also to explore more levels of issues ignored from others, such as legal, safety, business.
With the progress of the times, science and technology change rapidly. Nevertheless, we know that there is a gap between the theory and the practice of theoretical activity. From the laboratory to society, public opinions have always been what we care about the most. How the development of the project meets everyone's expectations? How could we reach a consensus between scientists and the public?
To this end, we visited experts in various fields, different companies to learn more from them, and continuously improve our project to think what is the best next step.
Eye kNOw Initial Development
Dr. Jia-Horung Hung
Attending Physician, Division of Ophthalmology, National Cheng Kung University Hospital
When first coming up with our topic — glaucoma, we immediately met with Dr. Jia-Horung Hung to gain knowledge about glaucoma. He not only pointed out the disadvantages of the current glaucoma treatment method but taught us four types of glaucoma. Hence, he held a lesson about glaucoma and dispelled the myth of anything related to our eyes as well. Through Dr. Hung's expertise, we also knew more about the diagnosis process for glaucoma nowadays and used ophthalmic perimeters personally to experience the examination of visual loss that enabled us to stand in the patients' shoes for better design in our project.
Moreover, he guided us with the operation of the trocar system via microincision vitrectomy surgery, which was used in our experiments on porcine eyes, allowed us to validate our concepts under real conditions. Besides, he also warned us about the safety issue that would be a vital factor when other people considered the feasibility of our contact lens. Instead of disputing our idea-glaucoma treatment using contact lens, Dr. Hung helped us keep expanding on it and encouraged us for more inspiration throughout the entire project. Contributing to the ongoing idea, Dr. Hung joined as a principal investigator to complete Eye kNOw together with us.
Eye Screen Initial Development
Professor Chih-Han Chang
Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University
Professor Chang provided us with the technique of Digital Image Correlation (DIC), a system that allowed us to prove our concept that the change of IOP would lead to the deformation of contact lens. Capable of measuring small and non-planar deformations, DIC has been applied in many fields, such as civil engineering and material science. As a result, we use DIC to obtain the strain of contact lens through Professor Chang's introduction, enabling us to get a high relationship between cornea and contact lens.
Professor Che-Wei Lin
Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University
Early diagnosis of glaucoma is important for glaucoma patients, thus we were constantly looking for any key factors related to glaucoma diagnosis. After visiting Ph.D. Hung, we got an idea that we can design a virtual reality of three-dimensional space full of light spots, and the user can give the system some information via specific actions to estimate the condition of vision loss. To check the feasibility of this idea, we met with Professor Lin, an expert in virtual reality. However, the discussion with him let us abandon this idea due to the complexity of the entire system. Whether a patient has vision loss needs professional judgment from the doctor, this became the toughest problem for our idea. Besides, Professor Lin also improved the position of our device, he suggested we should think more about our target audiences. Therefore, we decided to come up with another design for rapid screening.
Professor Chih-Chung Huang
Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University
After reviewing the literature, we learned that ultrasound is available in the measurement of corneal acoustic impedance, and the reflected signals are highly relevant to the intraocular pressure (IOP). Therefore, we met with Professor Huang who has expertise in ultrasound to confirm the feasibility of Eye Screen, a portable device providing painless measurement of IOP by receiving the reflected signals of ultrasound. In addition, Professor Huang also introduced us more about the property of ultrasound and suggested that we should take porcine eyes to do the function test of our device. Owing to Professor Huang's help, the initial design of Eye Screen was developed after this meeting, he would provide us with the instruments for future experiments as well.
Professor Chih-Hsien Huang
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University
In our device design, we expected that Eye Screen is a portable and low-cost tonometer, thus we needed to convert the function generator that can trigger the signals from the ultrasonic transducer into a circuit board used with Arduino. Professor Huang helped us complete the homemade PCB, provided the instrumental setup for us to conduct the experiments on porcine eyes, and gave suggestions in analyzing the results.
Professor Hao-Chih Liu
Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Cheng Kung University
Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D Printing, is an efficient approach to quickly turn our idea into reality. We met with Professor Liu for further study and operation. Before we printed the mold, he helped us modify the design of the mold for contact lens and provided a wide choice of materials, as well as allowing us to learn about the operation of the machine. Following his suggestion, the position of the chamber containing bacteria inside of contact lens was changed to the outside due to safety considerations. Also, that can enhance the sensitivity of Eye kNOw since the external deformation would be larger than the internal one. Besides that, he recommended us using spin-coating or molding to shape contact lens after printing finished. Thanks to Professor Liu's help, we could get all kinds of assistance in making our contact lens.
Eye kNOw future development
NARLabs
NARLabs (National Applied Research Laboratories) is a significant institution in Taiwan working on the integration of the operation of various research centers to improve efficiency and flexibility, also developing a better future of technology. We contacted NARLabs to gain more information about Eye kNOw. The structure design of Eye kNOw and how it would become a potential product were discussed in this meeting. Thus, we also started to research the regulation related to Eye kNOw, and the required clinical trials as well. Besides, they gave some advice on doing experiments and choosing a suitable material for our contact lens. The conference with NARLabs could not only let us grasp the current situation of Eye kNOw in the domestic studies, but prompt us to pay attention to the laws of Eye kNOw.
Camax Optical Corporation
To solve our problems of contact lens on mass-production, we visited Camax Optical Corp., a company selling a wide variety of contact lens. They showed us the production line that is from molding to the final package of contact lens. After understanding the design and function of our contact lens, they also gave us several vital feedback on sterilization and stereolithography of homemade contact lens. Witnessing the process of production and communicating with the factory personnel allowed us a more comprehensive concept of contact lens production.
Trade Wind Biotech
Trade Wind Biotech (TWBIO) is the first company in Taiwan that makes uses of synthetic biology as their core technique. During our visit there, we had the opportunity to meet with the CEO, Dr. Lance. He brought us on a tour around his factory, and learned how biosafety is achieved. We also had the chance to present our project to him, and shared our business model with him. He then shared his experience in starting a new company based on synthetic biology, including how to promote and sell products that contain engineered bacteria. He also kindly explained to us how to convince the public of our product’s safety as well as how to set prices for a biological product that has never been seen in the market. This rare opportunity to network with people in the industry was able to provide us with a different perspective, which benefited greatly to our product development.
2020 iGEM NCKU Tainan Eye kNOw Survey
Genetically Engineered Organisms (GMOs) have become a common thing in our daily life, as its development and successful achievement have brought attention to many stakeholders in different fields, including medicine. However, GMOs are also a controversial topic that leads the public to question the safety of the application. Especially since both Eye kNOw and Eye Screen will consist of engineered bacteria, we needed to understand the social acceptability of implementing GMOs into a therapeutic product.
To learn more about the public’s perspective, we launched a survey to understand the support level of integrating genetically modified bacteria into contact lens. Moreover, the daily usage of contact lens and the popularity of genetic engineering were also investigated. This survey included people from all over the world, with responses coming from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, the Czech Republic, China, Japan, Australia, and so on.
Population Sample
From the responses we collected, we were happy to find that over 40% were people aged 41-60 (see Fig. 1). This is because people of this age range will be our main target for Eye kNOw and Eye Screen. Moreover, the vast majority of people have completed high school diplomas at the very least (see Fig. 2).
Contact Lens Penetration
First, we wanted to realize the habits of the sample population to use contact lens. Thus, we came up with several questions to learn more about that. We were surprised to learn that 55% of them have worn contact lens before (see Fig. 3). Also, 53% of those who have worn contact lens usually wear disposable soft contact lens (see Fig. 4), and 52% dispose of it daily (see Fig. 5). In our survey, 77% are willing to buy contact lens to treat eye diseases effectively (see Fig. 6). Thus, when developing Eye kNOw, we chose to use disposable soft contact lens to meet the public's preference.
GMO Acceptance
Second, we wanted to access the sample population's knowledge level for GMOs. Unexpectedly, over half of them don't have much knowledge about GMOs (see Fig. 7). Thus, we were surprised when only 23% were willing to buy any GMO products, while 41% were considerably neutral (see Fig. 8).
From these responses, we could deduce that there is still a large percentage of people who do not fully support or are neutral about GMOs or genetic engineering. Therefore, this also inspired us to launch a series of events to educate people about synthetic biology (see Education).
Eye kNOw Acceptance
Finally, we wanted to assess the general public's acceptance of Eye kNOw - a pair of contact lens containing engineered E. coli to slow down glaucoma progression. Also, we would like to know how well they know glaucoma. We found out that 36% admitted knowing glaucoma not very much through our survey, while only 3% asserted that they were quite knowledgeable about glaucoma (see Fig. 9). Thus, raising public awareness of glaucoma also became a vital part of our education plans. Over 60% accepted Eye kNOw, while 34% were considerably neutral (see Fig. 10). Moreover, we are glad to learn that nearly 80% would recommend Eye kNOw to glaucoma patients if they know them (see Fig. 11).
We performed this survey to discern the public's needs and wants regarding therapeutic products for glaucoma. Despite the lower acceptance of GMOs, most of them are still willing to accept Eye kNOw. Just as we expected, the factor most people care about the most is Eye kNOw's safety.(see Fig. 12) Therefore, we also focused on enhancing the biosafety of Eye kNOw through choosing a DAP-deficient strain WM3064 and overexpressing csgD and csgA (see Design).
