in Mind the Gut aims to reduce the stigma around mental health problems by creating awareness about the physiological causes of disorders such as depression and anxiety. We aim to directly tackle this misconception through the science of our lab work: the connection between the gut microbiota and the brain to treat mental disorders. ▼
We are currently organising an event with the Mental Fight Club in Southwark, London. The Dragon Café is a weekly event in the Crypt of St George the Martyr Church. It is open to all, but is especially catered towards those struggling with mental health issues or patients from St. Thomas Hospital. Our one-off event will consist of a presentation and a Q&A about our project.
We will bring the prestigious photographer Graham Miller as our special guest, who will showcase “The Most Important people in the World”, a collection of images in which he captures mental health and the ethical issues around mental health.
In the evening of the 10th of September the UCL iGEM team will be organising a night dedicated to the everyday battles that are faced against mental health conditions and the stigmas associated with them. We will be hosting a range of performances including stand-up comedy, poetry, fine art, musical, and theatrical performances and talks that will give us all a peek into the lives and stories of the people that fight mental health stigma everyday, including scientists, doctors and artists.
Furthermore, we will be fundraising for CoolTan mental health charity and all donations will serve to improve the wellbeing of people with cognitive impairments.
We have contacted the mental health charity, YoungMinds UK, to widen our perception about mental health issues. This charity is catered towards students and young people with mental health issues. We are currently planning an interactive event to engage directly with these people and present our project.
Through our art and design we aimed to analyse and explore the future implications of delivering genetically modified bacteria to possibly enhance our bodies and minds. Furthermore, we wanted to bring our project to the general public, by creating a collection of pictures with potential products that could be manufactured to deliver our genetically enhanced bacteria.
This year, UCL iGEM team has decided to take a lead in debating the implications of our project and engaging with the public to address the ethical concerns raised by synthetic biology. Our team has therefore been looking deeply into the ethics of synthetic biology, particularly when it is applied to human health, as nowadays multiple social and ethical challenges are arising as a result of the development and expansion of this promising field.
General public survey
We wanted to know the general public perception on the possibility of manufacturing probiotics containing engineered bacterial strains, and what their view on the ethics of this procedure and synthetic biology in general was. Furthermore, we asked them what they thought the future implications and concerns of synthetic biology could be and whether they believed that it would be beneficial for society or not. In order to do so we prepared a short survey for people to fill in through social media, and then we analysed the results and built the statistics.
Our survey was translated into 5 different languages including Spanish, French, Portuguese and German as we believed that this would help us reach a broader range of people and therefore provide us with more significant data.
Knowing the public perception in a novel and sometimes controversial field such as synthetic biology will allow us to tackle some of the ethical questions and concerns raised by society in order to maintain the public legitimacy and support.
UCL Ethics
We have been working closely with UCL Ethics to make sure our project met the requirements set by our university regarding the safeguarding of rights, safety, dignity and well-being of research participants. All our interviews and video assays were approved by the UCL Chair of the Departamental Ethics Comitee. Previous to the interview the participants were informed about the nature of the research, the format of the questions they will be asked, their content, their rights, and how we would treat the information they provided us. Moreover, we distributed Information sheets and Consent forms to all participants to ensure that they provided fully consent before participating in the interviews.
Besides working on an effective biocontainment mechanism for our genetically modified probiotic strains we wanted to make sure that our team followed all the safety procedures and requirements in order to minimise any potential risks that our bacteria could represent to the environment and human-health.
Our team has strictly followed the safety guidelines set by iGEM as well as UCL Biochemical Engineering department. Before conducting any work in the lab all the team members received a Safety training by the UCL Biochemical Engineering Dept Biosafety Officer Dr Brian O’Sullivan. We have also checked that all the materials, probiotic and cell lines used fell into the iGEM White list as well as elaborate risk assessments for all the bacterial strains and hazardous materials used. We decided to Check in for approval both of the mammalian cell lines we worked with as they were classified as Risk 2 microorganisms. The Cell lines included: