Implementation

Pushing the boundaries of human achievement

Overview

Humans possess five basic senses - sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. These five senses are our connection to the world around us, as these are what that enables us to perceive and interact with our environment. Thus, if anything interferes with our senses, our interaction with the world becomes limited. While people can still live on with a sensory disability, any disturbances or loss of our senses will impact our lives profoundly. Even the slightest bit of interference to our senses, like having our nose blocked when coming down with the flu, is enough to make us uncomfortable. Imagine how we will feel if we lose one of our senses permanently.

Our most important sense is our eyesight, as 80% of what we perceive comes through our sense of sight. Despite its importance however, we all tend to take our vision for granted. Many eye diseases often occur unexpectedly, and often with unnoticeable symptoms like glaucoma - which means by the time people realize something is dangerously wrong with their eyesight, they are most likely to be halfway of being blind.

The eyes are one of the most sensitive organs of the body and thus are very vulnerable to damage. Not only that, the complexity of the eyes' structure is far more than that of the world's most advanced camera. Due to the complexity and sensitivity of the eyes, the speed of innovation and development of eye care and treatment has not been accelerating as fast as other kinds of diseases - even in iGEM. This is a huge obstacle to tackle, but not enough to deter iGEM NCKU-Tainan from developing new treatments for eye diseases.

Of the many ocular diseases humans are prone to, iGEM NCKU-Tainan decides to first focus on glaucoma, an ocular disease that causes irreversible damage to the optic nerve. A leading cause of irreversible blindness, glaucoma affects millions of people worldwide and causes heavy burden on healthcare systems. To solve this problem, iGEM NCKU-Tainan 2020 developed a revolutionary solution which consists of: Eye kNOw and Eye Screen. Eye kNOw is a pair of contact lenses that contain engineered bacteria producing nitric oxide in response to IOP fluctuation, while Eye Screen is an affordable and portable detection device that utilizes ultrasound to measure IOP and identify the high-risk groups.

More than just a concept

In our perspective, "Eye kNOw" and "Eye Screen" are more than just a concept. Not only are we envisioning the future for glaucoma treatment, but we are also working hard to make it a reality. By engaging with different stakeholders in the industry, we are able to understand how our project can fare in the real world, and what steps need to be taken in order to establish our project in the future. We first established a survey to learn more about the public's acceptance of Eye kNOw. We have also engaged with potential users and stakeholders to understand their needs and wants, and incorporate them into our project. Apart from that, we have come out with a business plan in reference to the market, analyzed benefits and risks, and the regulations involved to successfully build a future for Eye kNOw. However, it is not enough to gain information through the internet alone, thus we visited Camax Optical Corp to understand the fabrication of contact lenses and how we can potentially scale up our production. We have also visited Trade Wind Biotech (TWBIO), the first synthetic biology company in Taiwan. It was our pleasure that the CEO, Dr. Lance, shared his experience of setting up a company focused on synthetic biology, the business model he adopted, as well as tips on how to price our products. Through the whole discussion, we were able to make our business plan more comprehensive. The development of new treatments for eye diseases has been somewhat stagnant over the years despite the growing demand. Still, we believe that Eye kNOw can prove to become an important breakthrough for glaucoma treatment. For more details, please check Entrepreneurship to see how Eye kNOw can be established as a creative and potential product.

At the same time, raising awareness of glaucoma is imperative. Even if the early diagnosis for glaucoma patients is currently quite convenient, we thought prevention is better than cure. Because glaucoma is known as the "silent killer of vision," the patients' vision will deteriorate gradually if no early detection and intervention are provided, leading to blindness eventually. This prompted us to hold a series of education events to tell people of all ages knowledge of glaucoma. Thus, we participated in a summer camp called "Read for love". The participants were mostly composed of elementary and middle school children. We explained to them what glaucoma is and how to prevent it through simple and straightforward animations. Besides that, we organised a workshop at the Tainan First Senior High School where we told the students about the cause and seriousness of glaucoma and taught them a simple method to make their own eye perimeter, which is commonly used in glaucoma diagnosis. In addition, we also went to the Young Men's Christian Association to explain glaucoma and health care for the elderly's eyes. Besides, we published a series on "Glaucoma for dummies," which was posted on social media to spread glaucoma knowledge. Through these series of actions, we hope that more and more people can understand glaucoma and be able to prevent it correctly (see Education). However, the number of people we can reach out to is quite limited through these short-term education events. Hence, we also developed Eye Screen, which can help us raise public awareness of glaucoma.

Eye Screen is an affordable device providing real-time measurement of IOP via ultrasound. Eye Screen is portable and user-friendly, thus it is more accessible to everyone and enables the public to notice glaucoma. Through the collaboration with health care / public health organizations and research institutes, Eye Screen can be placed in selected areas to increase the willingness of people to measure IOP and in turn raise the awareness of the public on glaucoma effectively. Therefore, people will pay more and more attention to eye protection and avoid suffering from glaucoma so that the prevalence of glaucoma will decrease.

Besides, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare and medicine is booming. One of the most significant potential benefits of AI is that it can help people stay healthy so that they no longer need a doctor, or at least less frequently^[1]. Thus, keeping up with this trend is our next step. Therefore, Eye Screen will also become an auxiliary tool to collect data as samples for machine learning. In the future, Eye Screen 2.0 will release with the ability to perform big data analysis and provide higher accuracy. Therefore, Eye Screen 2.0 enables users or doctors to better monitor and detect. It also encourages individuals to adopt healthier behaviors and helps proactively manage a healthy lifestyle. By doing so, Eye Screen 2.0 allows users to monitor their eyes' condition and further control their health and well-being.

Envisioning the future of ocular treatment

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report, blindness, and vision impairment affect at least 2.2 billion people worldwide, which is far more than our imagination. However, we believe that everyone deserves "The right to sight", which was also an initiative launched by WHO in 1999. It sought to promote a world in which nobody is needlessly visually impaired, where those with unavoidable vision loss can achieve their full potential^[2]. It means that no one needs to be persecuted by eye diseases. The mission of "VISION 2020", a joint program established by the WHO and the International Preventive Agency for Blindness (IAPB), provides better treatment and prevention and increases attention to the avoidable causes of blindness - one vision that iGEM NCKU 2020 also shares.

In alignment with this vision, NCKU Tainan has made an effort to create an impact on society. We aimed to treat glaucoma, the first leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, with Eye kNOw and Eye Screen as the mission of VISION 2020. We can prompt the public to consistently pay more attention to glaucoma and provide an effective treatment to slow down glaucoma progression. However, this is just the beginning. There are still many things that need to be done before we can successfully implement Eye kNOw and Eye Screen in the future.

The eye is a very fragile organ, but it is due to these sensitive tissues that enable us to see the world's beauty. Compared to other organs, eyes are more vulnerable to damage. Precisely because of its sensitivity, we faced many challenges when developing both Eye kNOw and Eye Screen. For example, people will question whether engineered E. coli will infect the eyes or if the drugs will cause inflammation to the eyes. Despite facing these many obstacles, we still believed in our core idea, and in doing so, established a revolutionary treatment for eye diseases. We have also organized all of our research data and insights in our wiki in the hopes that our work can be used as a basis to help boost other related research. We hope to inspire more teams to step out of their comfort zone and try something new and different.

We look forward to seeing more inspirations and challenges that arise from our contributions. After all, humans have always been toeing the line between the possible and impossible, and we have faith that we would one day surpass the limits that we have imposed on ourselves.

Link to more details !

References

No longer science fiction, AI and robotics are transforming healthcare. Retrieved from https://reurl.cc/e8QK4Q
VISION 2020. The International Agency for the Prevention of blindness. Retrieved from https://www.iapb.org/about/vision-2020/