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                             Now that we were confident that the public would benefit from our idea, we set out designing our constructs. We visited nurses at the JR hospital in Oxford and the UTI clinic in London to get the Doctors on board; this discussion is essential for the success of the project.
 
                             Now that we were confident that the public would benefit from our idea, we set out designing our constructs. We visited nurses at the JR hospital in Oxford and the UTI clinic in London to get the Doctors on board; this discussion is essential for the success of the project.
 
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                            <h3>The John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford</h3>
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                                We regularly visited nurses and patients at the hospital to learn more about the problem of urinary infections and to discuss Solution.
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                                 Our first visit to the hospital was to the outpatient clinic during which we spoke with Jan, one of the nurses on the ward. Jan told us about a case of a person getting septicaemia as a result of a urinary infection. The patient had received antibiotics for seven days and had come back for a check up. Their urine sample was clear and all seemed fine but then the patient had started to shake. The bacteria were now in their blood as it had travelled back up the ureter to the kidney. Even though this was a rare case, it was shocking to hear about such a serious case and made our project feel very relevant.
 
                                 Our first visit to the hospital was to the outpatient clinic during which we spoke with Jan, one of the nurses on the ward. Jan told us about a case of a person getting septicaemia as a result of a urinary infection. The patient had received antibiotics for seven days and had come back for a check up. Their urine sample was clear and all seemed fine but then the patient had started to shake. The bacteria were now in their blood as it had travelled back up the ureter to the kidney. Even though this was a rare case, it was shocking to hear about such a serious case and made our project feel very relevant.
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                                 We took a lot from this initial conversation. We went onto investigating the pros and cons of the current methods of treating urinary infections and compared these to what Solution could offer. We realized that we needed to consider the catheter more from a hospital/medical perspective as up to this point we had confused its function, thinking it was more to do with administering medication rather than emptying the bladder. Following this meeting, the design of the catheter became an integral part of the project.
 
                                 We took a lot from this initial conversation. We went onto investigating the pros and cons of the current methods of treating urinary infections and compared these to what Solution could offer. We realized that we needed to consider the catheter more from a hospital/medical perspective as up to this point we had confused its function, thinking it was more to do with administering medication rather than emptying the bladder. Following this meeting, the design of the catheter became an integral part of the project.
 
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                            <h3>The John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford</h3>
 
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                                 We still wanted to learn more about urinary infections as well as to get some feedback from nurses abourtour idea. We organized a trip to the Adams Ward (Geratology) to learn more about how urinary infections affect elderly people.
 
                                 We still wanted to learn more about urinary infections as well as to get some feedback from nurses abourtour idea. We organized a trip to the Adams Ward (Geratology) to learn more about how urinary infections affect elderly people.
 
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                                <h4>First interview with Laura Evans, Adams Ward</h4>
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Revision as of 09:56, 15 August 2015

Practices

Introduction

Our project relies on a three way conversation between the team, the public and experts. It touches every aspect of the project, from our choice of application to the details of our delivery system. We promoted Synthetic Biology and iGEM through outreach programs to inspire the next generation.

Urinary tract infections are a huge problem globally with millions of cases reported each year. We’re producing a guide for everything you need to know about urinary tract infections, as well as a treatment to beat antibiotics, which are rapidly becoming ineffective.

Public Interaction

Project Choice

To decide on our project idea, we sent out an initial questionnaire to the public to hear about what they thought about synthetic biology. We asked what big problems they wanted solving. We took the questionnaire to schools, to the streets and to our friends.

Examples of their suggestions for the applications of synthetic biology include bacteria which:

  • Remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
  • Target and kill cancerous cells
  • Help treat Alzheimer's disease
  • Produce energy
  • Sew up holes in clothes
  • Produce teeth glue
  • Indicate how long someone has been dead for
  • Combat antibiotic resistance

Of our responses, around 40 were related to Medicine and Health [1]. This led us to choose that track for our project. However, it was our team member George Driscoll’s work at the UTI clinic in London which helped us to select UTIs as a specific cause. Due to the un-aesthetic nature of the infection, it often receives less attention with regard to research.

A large proportion of our responses expressed concern for how Synthetic Biology would be used in society, with several references to the issues of contamination and exploitation for profit. With this in mind, we constructed a second questionnaire about our project, to test whether the public would get behind it.

Initial Feedback

We sent a second questionnaire to find out more about whether the public would use a Solution from synthetic biology to treat Urinary tract infections. We asked more about whether they had heard of genetic engineering or synthetic biology, and how much they trust a recommended treatment by a doctor. In collaboration with UCL, we also filmed some of these responses on the street. The results were overwhelmingly positive.

Talking to Medical Professionals

Now that we were confident that the public would benefit from our idea, we set out designing our constructs. We visited nurses at the JR hospital in Oxford and the UTI clinic in London to get the Doctors on board; this discussion is essential for the success of the project.

Our first visit to the hospital was to the outpatient clinic during which we spoke with Jan, one of the nurses on the ward. Jan told us about a case of a person getting septicaemia as a result of a urinary infection. The patient had received antibiotics for seven days and had come back for a check up. Their urine sample was clear and all seemed fine but then the patient had started to shake. The bacteria were now in their blood as it had travelled back up the ureter to the kidney. Even though this was a rare case, it was shocking to hear about such a serious case and made our project feel very relevant.

Jan also made the following points:

  • People with infections have a catheter because they need a way to empty the bladder; else the urine travels up the ureter and back into the bladder
  • If a patient becomes septic the catheter has to be removed or can be fatal
  • UTIs are not just contracted by the catheter and it is important to also consider community based UTIs
  • “UTIs are very common and can be quite painful”
  • No separate ward for UTIs – they are treated in every ward
  • The protocol for treatment is to take a urine sample, see if there is an infection, and prescribe antibiotics that the bacteria are most sensitive to
  • Elderly hospital wards are likely to have many cases of UTIs

We took a lot from this initial conversation. We went onto investigating the pros and cons of the current methods of treating urinary infections and compared these to what Solution could offer. We realized that we needed to consider the catheter more from a hospital/medical perspective as up to this point we had confused its function, thinking it was more to do with administering medication rather than emptying the bladder. Following this meeting, the design of the catheter became an integral part of the project.

The John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford

We still wanted to learn more about urinary infections as well as to get some feedback from nurses abourtour idea. We organized a trip to the Adams Ward (Geratology) to learn more about how urinary infections affect elderly people.

First interview with Laura Evans, Adams Ward

Further Feedback

We are still designing a delivery system for our UTI treatment. We plan on asking the public to select from a variety of options, and then to design our treatment around the most popular one.

Outreach

To promote Synthetic Biology and iGEM, we’ve used a variety of approaches.

Corpus College Presentation

Content coming soon..

UNIQ workshop

We met with 40 prospective Oxford students to teach them about Synthetic Biology. The students had in interest in Biochemistry but knew nothing about iGEM. We hammered home the key message of Synthetic Biology - that we achieve more progress by expanding a registry of standardised biological parts - through a 15 minute introductory presentation on BioBricks. We then split them into groups and gave each one a mentor from our iGEM team. We worked through questions to test their understanding in a tutorial style and asked them to explain the constructs of previous iGEM teams. They finished by presenting their findings to each other.

Videos

We’ve produced the following videos to promote our project and help future teams:

  • Introduction to Oxford iGEM ( link)
  • Stochastic Modelling Tutorial ( link)

References

  1. [1] You can see all of our responses here.