Team:IIT Madras/Practices
Philosophy
Antibiotic resistance is a global issue which does not distinuguish among developed and developing world. India, a growing and over-populated country, is the largest consumer of antibiotics with 13 billion pills used in 2010 and according to latest reports has highest rates of antibiotic resistance development. As we see now that the once-treatable infections are becoming difficult to cure, raising costs of healthcare facilities, and patient mortality is rising. Our project tends to deal this problem on a basic level understanding of the underlying principles of evolution, structural biology, quorum sensing and synthetic biology. This project can be proved as a revolutionary solution to a threat that is considered as second biggest danger by U.K. after terrorism. Our project is very important for our country as it is taking a huge toll from our new generation worth thousands of lives. According to a report 58000 children in India died in one year due to infection with super resistant bacteria passed on through mother.
WHO guidelines to tackle antibiotic resistance state that research and innovation is a very i<>mportant part of the process and can bring solution to the tragic consequences of this problem
We as a dedicated group of undergraduate researchers of IIT Madras took the challenge to find the cure to the apparently unsolvable as well as unavoidable antibiotic resistance development by using basic and elementary principles of biology in an innovative engineered machine to bring the whole new change to this world. We as responsible citizens of India and socially responsible young researchers understood the need of the hour and are trying our best to fight against this new global threat which is currently hitting the globe hard.
After we selected the problem for which we want to find solution, we analysed the problem and thought about ways to solve clinical problem using synthetic biology which is a relatively novel approach to solve this problem. IIT Madras being an engineering cum research institute gave us a perfect environment to work on this problem.
Public Engagement and dialogue
We interviewed two professionals in the clinical field who regularly deal with the problem of antibiotic resistance. Discussions with them were thought provoking and gave us several insights to the problem.
Interview with Dr. V Ramasubramaniam:
As part of human practises we decided to perform two tasks. First, we decided to have a discussion with a doctor who specialises in infectious diseases so that we could get a closer look at the real world situation regarding antibiotic resistance. Dr. Ramasubramanian, a senior consultant in Infectious Diseases, HIV, Tropical Medicine and Travel Medicine at Apollo Hospitals. He specialises in Infection Control, HIV medicine, Tropical Infections and Travel Health.
The doctor explained to us that antibiotic use could be called a tragedy of the commons, and it was inevitable that bacteria would develope resistance sooner or later with such widespread use of antibiotics. A tragedy of the commons occurs when multiple individuals, acting solely out of self-interest, ultimately exhaust a limited shared resource despite the fact that it is not in the community’s long-term interests. Antibiotic use has been called a tragedy of the commons, because although individuals might benefit from the use of antibiotics, concerns exist about the irreparable societal effects of antibiotic resistance developing from the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in clinical and agricultural settings.
Interview with Dr. Mahalakshmi:
Dr. Mahalakshmi is the chief medical officer at Institute Hospital, IIT Madras. We had a chance to meet her during our human practices campaign, where we were spreading the awareness about Antibiotic Resistance through our posters. We talked about how we can minimize the risk of antiobiotic resistance by spreading the awareness inside the campus. We explained our project to her that how we are solving the problem of antibiotic resistance. She liked our idea to spread the awareness through the posters as she raised the concerns that it is difficult for the doctors to talk about this to each patient as there is a huge inflow of patients every day.
Education Campaign and Awareness Program
We took one step further by organising an introductory session on Synthetic Biology for undergraduate students in collaboration with Biotechnology Club, Centre for innovation (CFI), IIT Madras. We had an interactive session, wherein we discussed ours and a few previous year iGEM projects.
Students seemed to be quite impressed by the plethora of applications offered by Synthetic Biology. This education campaign was a really successful one. We met quite a few enthusiastic students who were curious and had some really intriguing doubts in relation to our project as well as synthetic biology in general. Response from the students was phenomenal and showed some serious promise as far as participation in iGEM in future is concerned.
We designed a poster exclusively for our awareness purpose and that poster was put up in different parts of Institute Hospital in IIT Madras. There we explained patients and nurses, the general protocol and guidelines about antibiotics usage and their disposal. Patients were very cooperative as well as curious to know more about our project.
About Us
We are a team of undergraduates from the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras in iGEM 2015
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Location
Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras Sardar Patel Road, Chennai
Pincode : 600036
Contact Us
Email: igemiitm2015@gmail.com
Tel: +04422574128
