Be Bald!!

Our team walked out of lab and launched an activity in NCTU. We called it “Be Bald!” In order to inform people the specificity of targeted drug.

We would like to provide a chance for people to see their appearance without hair which is a common cancer image for people. People react to their new look with a sense of weirdness. Meanwhile, we told our testers that cancer patient face the hairless look because of chemo therapy which is the most common therapy. In this way, our team focus on the targeted drug detection which would help a great number of people and lower the damage to human body and thus reduce possibility of hair loss. A lot of people took part in “Be Bald” and told us they felt what we are doing will benefit many people and it’s so important and meaningful. They would love to support us with all their hearts. After “Be Bald”, all of our teammates felt a sense of achievement that we could really help people and this really motivate us and boost our morale.

Education: Biocamp

In the summer, our department held a Biocamp for senior high students. Most of our team members participated in holding the event. The purpose of Biocamp is to let high school students learn about biology and have fun during the process. Three of our teammates designed a lecture to teach them synthetic biology with simple concept. What’s more, we promoted iGEM to them with introducing different iGEM projects, and conveying the essence and values of iGEM that we have realized during the processes. At last we also share our project with them specifically, the main idea of our biobricks and goals. After the lecture, we received some great response from them. All of them were fascinated by the idea of using enzymes and different assemblies of biobricks to create new functions, and interested in participating in iGEM. Hope all of them have the opportunity to become an iGEMer, enjoying the processes just like us

Clinical: Visit Doctor and Interview with recovered patient

An oncologist visited our university, we grasped the opportunity and we talked to the doctor and elaborated our project. We were wondering how we will help patients with our project and if we really provide a better way to prediagnose. After a long discussion about the practical use of our project and the advantages. The doctors aid he was pretty amazed by our intelligent idea that we just use ecoli to prediagnose. That simplified the procedure and rose the efficiency. We were so excited that our project could also be applied well in practical use. It could really help people!

One gorgeous day, three of us visited a teacher, who has recovered from breast cancer for 4 years. The purpose of this meetup was to recognize deeply how a cancer patient suffered from cancer. She surprised us with her open-minded, optimistic and brave personality. She discovered the tumor by herself and confronted with her misfortune straightly. Because of her characteristic, she overcame the cancer with only 4 chemotherapies. We really appreciate her sharing. During the conversation, we had a wonderful interaction with her, introducing our ideas and goals to her. Despite that the therapy she took was not relative to our project, we still received a lot of supportive response for our project from her. Last but not the least, we all realized some valuable experiences and feelings in the recesses of our mind from this meetup!