Difference between revisions of "Team:Peking"

Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, remains one of the world’s most serious public health problems. Although tuberculosis is curable and the treatment success rate is high, it is still the second most common cause of death from infectious disease (after HIV). Most of the deaths occur in developing countries that are lack of effective identification of those in need of therapy. In 2014 there were 5 million active cases, 1.5 million new cases in China. About 80% cases occurred in rural area, with an enormous amount of delayed or failed diagnosis.
Case detection is currently the rate-limiting step in disease control. A diagnostic tool with high sensitivities and specificities is desired urgently, and it is supposed to be used at the point-of-care (POC) within a clinic or in the community.
To obviate such problems, Peking iGEM team is developing a novel Mycobacterium tuberculosispathogen detection system that can transform biomarkers of the disease into optical signal or electric signal. Combined with our work in software and hardware development, we believe this new advanced system can be turned out as a powerful tool in disease diagnosis, with high sensitivities and specificities.