How can we solve problems that affect people?
Our goal is to prevent and detect people's dental caries, thereby reducing the occurrence of dental caries. Since our project requires us to understand the existing conditions and the prevalence of dental caries and other backgrounds, we consulted people from different social areas. With the help of these social practices, we have made adjustments and improvements to the project. We hope that this work can help treat dental caries better and more effectively.
1. Understanding the Problem
KEY INTERVIEWEDWe found that partners around us often suffer from tooth decay.Then we do a survey with HZAU-China,the most surprising data for us is that more than 80% of people still suffer from dental caries. In order to help them alleviate the pain of tooth decay, we had a dialogue on the problem of tooth decay and discussed how to use synthetic biology to prevent and detect tooth decay.
WHAT DID WE DISCOVER?
By consulting relevant information and communicating with stakeholders, we have learned that dental caries is one of the three major human diseases. The prevention and detection of dental caries require urgent solutions.
Dental caries is the most common oral disease in the world. Nearly half of the world's population suffers from dental caries.
The current methods for detecting caries are very complicated.
The treatment of dental caries is expensive, and its treatment cost makes it the fourth-most costly oral disease globally, increasing people's economic pressure.
Dental caries is a major global public health problem.
Everyone we talked to demonstrated the impact of dental caries on them and emphasized the need for new solutions to reduce pain.
2. Ideation
PROPOSE SOLUTIONS AND VERIFY THEIR NEEDAfter identifying and understanding the many disadvantages of dental caries, our team began to brainstorm. After the discussion, we analyzed the needs of stakeholders and suggested two synthetic biology solutions. These are aimed at the current lack of convenient and fast dental caries detection products and expensive dental caries treatment.
After hearing about the pain caused by dental caries, we are determined to help people in distress. We went to Shenzhen Chronic Disease Prevention and Treatment Institute to get the feedback of our proposed solution to the above mentioned targeted problems from Director Ruan Shihong.
Introduction:
Dr. Ruan Shihong is the director of the Department of Stomatology of Shenzhen Chronic Disease Prevention and Treatment Center. She is specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of dental pulp. Our project is to prevent and detect dental caries, and she has rich experience in this area, so we visited and asked her for advice.
Help:Doctors took a keen interest in our ideas. They told us that most people treat dental caries every day. People from all age groups suffer from this disease, and the majority of these patients come to the hospital for testing when the disease condition is already severe. Besides, there is currently no means to detect sub-health of oral caries, which strengthens our thinking.
Rectification:Through detailed conversations with physicians, we learned that ,we know that many people were suffer from dental caries in painful. On the other hand,there is currently no means to detect dental caries sub-healthy status in the market. Our idea is designed to treat it before obvious pain was occurred . We wanted to make an effort to help people in need.
Also, we consulted the FDI World Dental Federation via email and expressed our ideas. They appreciated our project and helped us to get feedback of the solution.
Introduction:
FDI is the leading representative institution of more than 1 million people globally, and its vision is to improve the oral health of people all over the world. We hope they understand our thoughts and give us feedback.
Help:FDI showed interested in our ideas. Not only that, but they also gave us a data map of global dental caries and a white paper on dental caries prevention and management, which is of great help to us.
Rectification:We choose probiotics as the chassis by evaluating their information, which increased our project's value.
3. Design Solutions
EXPERT CONSULTATIONSAfter verifying the demand for our solutions, we will start designing. Furthermore, we will continue to meet stakeholders and improve our projects during the design process to ensure that our products can meet the public's needs.
1) prevention part
We choose limulus as an antimicrobial peptide, but limulus is a broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptide, which can cause damage to other flora. To answer these questions, we interviewed experts who provided us with insights on how to design.
Description:
Dr. Xiangdong Zha is a professor in the School of Life Sciences of Anhui University. He mainly develops the genetic engineering production method of cationic antibacterial peptides. We contacted him to understand the secretion and expression of antibacterial peptides in detail to determine the targeted antibacterial of our caries treatment module.
Help:Professor Zha acknowledged the importance of our project and took a keen interest in our project. He told us that the fusion expression of antimicrobial peptides would be much higher than that of ordinary antimicrobial peptides. He also learned that the co-expression of anionic fragments and the addition of fusion heads could improve engineered bacteria. In addition, we also know how to verify the targeted sequence we designed faster in the experiment, thereby speeding up our testing.
Rectification:We have made corresponding adjustments to the design of antimicrobial peptides, using the form of fusion expression to generate antimicrobial peptides, resulting in higher expression of antimicrobial peptides. At the same time, we used the method recommended by Professor Zha to verify the sensitivity of the targeted sequence, which accelerated our experiment's progress.
2) Detection part
The primary pathogen of dental caries is Streptococcus mutans, which can secrete CSP signal peptide. Therefore, we designed a detection system based on the density sensing system of Streptococcus mutans, but we don’t know how to make our strain recognize CSP signal peptide. There are other considerations. To answer these questions, we interviewed experts who provided us with insights on how to design.
Description:
Dr. Jiang Huifeng is a synthetic biology expert from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on genetic modification pathways in synthetic biology, and he has advanced insights into the rational modification and design methods of protein functional elements. He has the knowledge and expertise in this area, which prompted us to contact him and ask for his opinion.
help:Dr. Jiang confirmed our genetic circuit for detecting caries and provided suggestions for the feasibility of our project. He suggested that we add a feedback inhibition to the treatment module to reduce antimicrobial peptides' damage to other flora. At the same time, he also gave us membrane proteins that are similar to those of Chassis bacteria in the process of membrane protein formation. In addition, he also pointed out some of our problems related to biological safety.
Rectification:With Professor Jiang's advice, we have solved the problem of how the membrane protein is formed so that the difficulty of our detection module is solved smoothly.
3) Product section
In order to put our project into practice, we intend to make it into a product that can more effectively help people prevent and detect dental caries. We seek expert advice to create the product form that can solve this problem.
Description:
Dr. Dai Zhuojun is a Ph.D. in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. His main research direction is to use polymer chemistry and physics to combine synthetic biology to solve problems. His primary research uses the two-way feedback of stimulating sensitive hydrogels and engineering flora to achieve downstream protein purification. Protein engineering and material design realize the production of active materials. We want to contact Dr. Dai to determine if our idea of using hydrogel as our product form is feasible.
Help:We asked Professor Dai whether it was feasible to use hydrogel as our treatment module's product form. Still, We worried that the recombinant strains could not be stably attached to the hydrogel as we imagined. She agreed that we use hydrogel as our product form. She told us not to worry about the attachment problem of the strain. She also had the chassis strain that we need, and she happily gave us.
Rectification:We have a deeper understanding of hydrogels and eliminated the concerns of strain attachment problems. We learned that we could achieve treatment by planting strains on hydrogels, and our ideas have been recognized.
4. Evaluating and improving on Design
FURTHER IMPROVEMENT OF OUR PROJECT DESIGNPrevention product
At the beginning of prevent product,we consulted several dental clinic that seek what the best prevention product is of our project.After taking,we have summary that making a antibacterial toothpaste.
However,we thought that toothpaste with anti-caries effect is not fresh after talk with supermarket guide.Moreover people generally brush their teeth for less than 3 minutes, which does not meet the production time of our antimicrobial peptides.
After then,we concerted about make the tooth stickers.We consulted with Professor Dai and learned that the idea of using tooth stickers as our product was very good.We do a survey to care about the public attitude. But we got the feedback that more people can not accepted to prevent dental caries with tooth stickers which make them uncomfortable.Therefor we wanted to change the form of product.
During a supermarket purchase process, the chewing gum next to the counter attracted our attention. People who paid the bill had a high purchase rate of chewing gum, while the purchase rate of chewing gum for families with children was even better, and people's average purchase rate for chewing gum. The chewing time reached 10 minutes, especially for children. For this reason, we want to use it as part of our treatment products so that the public can treat dental caries by chewing gum.
Detection product
When we were thinking about dental caries' detection products, we felt distressed because of the need to design thermal insulation devices. How to create an affordable and effective testing product made us brainstorm. Our inspiration comes from the incubator. Taking the idea from the incubator's insulation device, we processed and modified it to form our insulation device for detecting caries.
To confirm our products' feasibility and the public's acceptance of our products, we visited the company because the company's views can indirectly reflect the public's endorsement of our products.
We had the honor to interview Zheng of Timing Technology Company. We learned that there is no domestic dental caries detection device in the market that firmly encourages us to make this product.But the use of the product can not be too single and needs diversification. It is necessary to have a competitive advantage.
In addition, we also visited Timing Technology. Its founder, Zheng Hong, listened to our project and suggested that we should not only target a single Streptococcus mutans to prevent dental caries because dental caries results from multiple bacterial groups working together. Furthermore, the packaging of dental plaque will affect the performance of our antimicrobial peptides. In terms of products, Mr. Zheng told us that the prevented product is really a good idea,we should keep going.
References
- Yang Longqiang,Zhou Qiao,Liu Minchuan.Research progress on the adhesion mechanism of Streptococcus mutans[J].International Journal of Stomatology,2011,38(02):229-233+238.
- Zeng Xiaojuan, Liang Zimin. Effects of plaque on the pathogenesis of dental caries [J].]; and Guangdong Dental Disease Control 2000(S1):435-436
- Zheng Huifang, Yang Jianwen, Guo Chunfeng, Gao Yuzhou. Analysis of dental caries status of 838 primary and middle school students in Dongxiang nationality of Linxia state [J].].1 China Primary Health Care ,2020,34(08):97-99.
- Zhu Hongmei. Caries Disease Investigation Report [J].]1 Guangxi Medicine ,1994(Z1):451-453.
- Ma Yanhe,Jiang Huifeng,Lou Chunbo,Liu Jun,Fu Yu,Wang Qinhong,Li Yin.Synthetic biology and biosafety[J].Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,2016,31(04):432-438.
- Jiang Huifeng.Synthetic biotechnology contributes to sustainable development[J].Biotechnology Bulletin,2020,36(04):6-7.
- Kong Xiaowei,Chen Qingfeng,Cha Xiangdong,Che Yuanyuan,Xu Xuejiao,Ma Lijuan.Research progress of oral antimicrobial peptides[J].Journal of Anhui University (Natural Science Edition),2015,39(06):102-108.