Difference between revisions of "Team:SDU-Denmark/Tour10"

 
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<h1> Introduction </h1>
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<p> <i> "Change is the law of life and  those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." - <b>John F. Kennedy</b></i> </p>
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<h1 align="center"> Project description </h1>
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<a class="popupImg alignRight" style="width:150px" target="_blank" href="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/6/6a/SDU2015_Babymice.png" title="Baby mice who will be brought up as laboratory animals and used for antibody production. The aim of this project is to find an alternative to the use of animals in the antibody production.">
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<div class="thumbcaption">Figure 1: Photo of baby mice taken at the animal facilities at Odense University Hospital (OUH). </div>
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<a class="popupImg alignRight" style="width:150px" target="_blank" href="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/3/38/SDU2015_Gallery_WorkingintheLaboratort.png" title="Team members working in the laboratory. Finding a solution for the alternative to traditional antibody production.">
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<div class="thumbcaption">Figure 2: Members of the team discussing something in the laboratory. </div>
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Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are widely used in many fields of research e.g. microbiology, cell biology and biochemistry among others. They have several purposes in research such as purifying molecules and as molecular tags.
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<span class="intro">Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are extensively used in scientific and fundamental medical research</span>.    
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The process of producing mAbs in the laboratory goes as follows. Antigen A is repeatedly injected into an animal (usually a mouse, rabbit, sheep or goat), at intervals of several weeks (immunization).
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After a couple of weeks B-lymphocytes stimulated by antigen A secrete large amounts of anti-A antibodies. The antibodies can then be extracted from the bloodstream. B-cells stimulated by antigen A will divide for some time but only till a certain limit. Therefore it is necessary to fuse the B cell, from the animal injected with antigen, with a tumor cell, resulting in an indefinitely dividing hybrid cell. This hybrid secretes anti-A antibodies of a single type (i.e. monoclonal).  
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The nowadays production methods of mAbs are not only time-consuming and costly but also at the expense of animal lives. Antibodies have many applications in research, diagnostics and show great promise in treatment of cancer. But the advancement is held back due to the expensive and time consuming production. Therefore we propose an alternative to antibodies; peptide aptamers – produced in <i>Escherichia coli</i> (<i>E. coli</i>). The variable loop of the peptide aptamer is generated through a random nucleotide library and held together by an optimized, enzymatic inactive version of human Thioredoxin (hTrx) used as a scaffold protein. We are using the bacterial two-hybrid system to generate and, at the same time, screen for peptide aptamers with desired properties. Additionally we are proposing a production model. 
Since this process is prolonged and involves the destiny of several animals many researchers have been looking for an alternative method and we did to.  
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Thus we are developing a system with the purpose of producing peptide aptamers that function alternatively to antibodies used until now.
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<span class="intro">Our team consists</span> of nine students from five different educations; philosophy, chemical engineering, biochemistry and molecular biology, biomedicine and medicine. During the last 6 months we have laughed, cried, built friendships and overcome a lot of struggles together. In the end of the day it has been a whole lot of fun! To guide and help us through the journey, we have had our four supervisors. Go to the next page <a href="https://2015.igem.org/Team:SDU-Denmark/Tour11">the team</a> and dig deeper into the members of the SDU Denmark 2015 iGEM team.  
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Latest revision as of 03:28, 19 September 2015

"Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." - John F. Kennedy

Project description

Figure 1: Photo of baby mice taken at the animal facilities at Odense University Hospital (OUH).
Figure 2: Members of the team discussing something in the laboratory.

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are extensively used in scientific and fundamental medical research. The nowadays production methods of mAbs are not only time-consuming and costly but also at the expense of animal lives. Antibodies have many applications in research, diagnostics and show great promise in treatment of cancer. But the advancement is held back due to the expensive and time consuming production. Therefore we propose an alternative to antibodies; peptide aptamers – produced in Escherichia coli (E. coli). The variable loop of the peptide aptamer is generated through a random nucleotide library and held together by an optimized, enzymatic inactive version of human Thioredoxin (hTrx) used as a scaffold protein. We are using the bacterial two-hybrid system to generate and, at the same time, screen for peptide aptamers with desired properties. Additionally we are proposing a production model.

Our team consists of nine students from five different educations; philosophy, chemical engineering, biochemistry and molecular biology, biomedicine and medicine. During the last 6 months we have laughed, cried, built friendships and overcome a lot of struggles together. In the end of the day it has been a whole lot of fun! To guide and help us through the journey, we have had our four supervisors. Go to the next page the team and dig deeper into the members of the SDU Denmark 2015 iGEM team.