Team:WHU-China/Safety
Safe and secure project design
Safe and secure transfers
Safe and secure communication
Aimed at a therapeutic project with real-world feasibility, we’re keeping the ideas of safety and security in mind from the start to the end. Here, four major safety aspects were considered in our project this year. To get detailed information of our safety concerns, please see our safety form.
The iGEM team WHU-China is in full compliance with the safety and security policies of the iGEM competition. Before starting our wet lab work, we made the check-in registrations for level-2 organisms Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1, THP-1 and HL-60 cell lines, and several parts, including the enzyme AiiO and chemokines, and the iGEM Safety and Security Committee approved our registrations.
An online training of safety and security was also held before we went into laboratories, and all wet-lab members were engaged in the discussion of emerging lab safety challenges this year, on the basis of the laboratory management handbook last year.
Three laboratories were used during our project this year, including the scientific training laboratory, Prof. Liu Tiangang’s laboratory and Prof. Zhang Xiaodong’s laboratory, and different experiments were performed in qualified laboratories with corresponding safety levels. Wearing personal protection equipment like masks, gloves and gowns was especially highlighted, in case that the hazardous chemicals or the opportunistic pathogen bacteria did harm to the wet-lab members.
To develop a prophylactic therapy, three safety factors were taken into consideration, including:
Safe chassis: Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) is a nonpathogenic E. coli strain and one of the best examined probiotic strains. The safety, tolerability, and efficacy of consuming EcN for curing chronic diseases have also been evaluated. Recent interests towards microbiome in respiratory tract and their interactions with the host are increasing, and it’s believed that the mucosa will renew the microbiota in low respiratory tract on a regular basis. So our engineered EcN will not have a long-time effect, and patients might inhale the negotiators just before ventilation to prevent VAP from happening. Additionally, we discussed the use of suicide switches in the engineered probiotics with Tongji-China and UCAS-China.
Chemokine and immune systems: Utilizing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) inside human body is a controversial idea that might lead to unpredictable results. After consulting the researchers, we add safety parts in our genetic circuits. Thus we developed a flexible machinery to control the secretion of chemokines, which involved the controllable expression of TEV protease to address the possible leakage of upstream pqs promoter and modulate the secretion, in case of cytokine storm. Considering the complexity of cytokine interaction, we intended to integrate anti-inflammatory drugs with our therapy to minimize the side effects, with a dose pattern similar to asthma inhaler.
Gene containment: How to prevent the horizontal gene transfer? We designed another safety part: toxin-antitoxin systems, in case of the leakage of important modules and antibiotic resistance genes.
The information of our safety design was also presented in the page of proposed implementation.
This year, we had the most of genes synthesized and shipped by iGEM collaborators IDT and GenScript, who guaranteed safe and secure transfers. In addition, we had the primers synthesized by Sangon Biotech, who also strictly followed the transfer rules. Dr. Huang Shuqiang from Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) generously sent us the probiotic strain Escherchia coli Nissle 1917, and we distributed the strain to Tongji-China with the guidance of Prof. Xie Zhixiong. For level-2 organisms Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 and cell line THP-1, the experts (Prof. Xie Zhixiong, Prof. Zhang Qiuping and CCTCC) offered them to us with relevant safety measures fulfilled respectively. CCTCC transferred the E. coli strain K12 MG1655 to us for cloning the toxin-antitoxin system MazE and MazF.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic, the safe and secure communication activities were necessary. To minimize the potential risks of getting infected or infecting others, we mainly took online communications from May to August, strictly obeying the social distancing rules and wearing personal protection equipment when outsides. Before we went back to campus, Wuhan government had lowered the risk level, as wearing masks is not mandatory. However, we’re still with masks in the campus and avoided unnecessary no-mask moments when holding HP events.
