Education and Public Engagement

This year, the target audiences of SYSU-MEDICINE are high school students, college students and the ordinary citizens.

For high school students, 21 students and 2 teachers were invited from middle school to attend this activity – “Have a Look at Your Genome”, which aims at sharing some basic knowledge of biology and synthetic biology and sharing what we were doing with iGEM. We found that it was difficult for them to understand what are iGEM, synthetic biology and our project. So we made a brochure to introduce those definitions to the public. And for sustainability, we made a booklet to guide high school to build biological laboratory, which will make it easier and more interesting for high school students to learn about basic knowledge and experiments of synthetic biology.

A major problem turn up during CCiC – most college students do not know MSCs treatment, much less majority of people in the world. Though we had made a brochure introducing iGEM, synthetic biology and our project, it proved that it was much less enough. As for college students, we held a speech called "MSC with GPS" to explain what is MSCs therapy and how we can make it more effective. Additionally, questionnaires of lab safety were sent out for learning how well college students know and behave.

As for ordinary citizens, we transform unintelligible knowledge of MSCs into popular and easy-understanding stories for the public to learn, which are presented on the Internet. The questionnaire about acknowledgment of MSCs therapy and clinical trials, after finishing each question, we explained the misunderstanding part to the person who answered the questionnaire, helping him/her know more.

For further understanding of the methods of enhancing the chemotsxis of MSCs, we read a lot of literatures and wrote a review in Chinese, contributing to an academic journal. More

"Have a Look at Your Genome"

21 students and 2 teachers were invited from No.16 Middle School of Guangzhou to attend this activity – “Have a Look at Your Genome”, which aims at sharing some basic knowledge of biology and synthetic biology and sharing what we were doing with iGEM.

21 students and 2 teachers were invited
Most middle school students in China have rare chances to do biochemical experiments. All they can learn is only the theory. So when we contacted the No.16 Middle School in Guangzhou, they were very glad to attend this activity. As laboratory was limited, we can only accept 21 students. But we recorded the whole activity so that the other students can learn about these experiments from the videos.

This activity mainly contains two parts, theory and experiments. The experiments are Genome DNA extraction of oral mucosa keratinocyte, PCR and agar gel electrophoresis. Because some procedures of the experiments take long time of waiting, we make usage of the waiting time for teaching, sharing and discussion.

HP member is explaining the experiment principles

We taught the students how to use micropipettes, centrifugal machine, PCR thermocycle instrument etc.


Students were doing the experiments
Expect teaching the theory of the three experiments mentioned above, during the waiting time, we share the knowledge of synthetic biology and information of iGEM, discussing what we were doing with MSCs.

At first, they were surprised by this brand new therapy. With discussing further, some students worried about the safety of MSCs therapy and we explained the safety issue to them.

Everyone learned things from this activity

What makes this activity more meaningful is that the teacher from No.16 Middle School contacted us after the activity and asked for help to carry out those experiments in their school. We sent a list of the apparatus to them for preparation, which can benefit more students in middle school.

It really encouraged us a lot that the HP work can have such good impact on more people and made us feel that HP work is truly worthy. A good idea came to our mind that we could copy the idea of this activity to encourage other middle schools to carry out more experiment courses for students, leading them to have better understanding of synthetic biology and the secret of life. What shows below is a guidebook made for it.

Guidebook For Simple Synthetic Biology Experiment.pdf

As energy limited, we were not able to contact more middle schools to practice our thought but it provides a very good direction for other teams in China to bring synthetic biology to more people and push China middle school laboratory building.

Additionally, a problem was found during the discussion, too much new knowledge is very difficult for people to understand and remember, so immediately after the activity, we made brochures aiming to briefly introduce our project, synthetic biology and iGEM. See the brochure at page Brochure.

MSCs with GPS

During Central China iGEM Consortium (CCiC), we found that lots of members from the other teams were confused about what is MSC (mesenchymal stem cell) because most of them major in biology science instead of medicine. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 66 citizens around the Cancer center of Sun Yat-Sen University and indicated that only 13.64% of interviewees understood MSC clearly. As a result, we realized that it was of great importance to hold a lecture to popularize MSC.

On September 21st, SYSU-MEDICINE held a lecture to deliver the information about iGEM and MSC therapy in Sun Yat-Sen University. In the first part, Li Tong introduced the history of synthetic biology and the different parts in iGEM competition. The member structure and project description in SYSU-MEDICINE were included in her presentation. She also sincerely invited the participants to build up a team in next iGEM season. The second part was delivered by Huang Yinong talking about the present MSCs therapy status. She explained the reasons for why MSCs are the great choice in cell therapy and indicated the great effect on chronic GVHD and hepatic failure in MSCs clinical trials. For the third part, Zhou Longyuan aimed at the conflicting outcomes in long term MSCs therapy and provided the idea to create the next generation MSCs by the method of synthetic biology, which is the main content in our team.

After that, Li Qihao introduced the confronting problem in laws and safety when the modified MSCs are applied in the clinical application. At the last part, Wang Jiancheng, the instructor of SYSU-MEDICINE, shared his personal experience in stem cell research.

During the lecture, many audiences were excited about the achievements in synthetic biology and MSCs therapy. We were happy to see that some of them even expressed their willing to build a new team in next iGEM season.

Brochure

During the activity "Have a Look at Your Genome", we found none of iGEM, synthetic biology and our project was easy for the public to understand. In order to briefly and effectively introduce our project, synthetic biology and iGEM, we made brochures for public engagement.


The brochure showed above is English version, but what we really sent out was Chinese version with the same content and design.

Questionnaire Report1

The Questionnaire is about acknowledgment of biology safety among the students in Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University.
Questionnaire1—The acknowledgment of biologiy safety.pdf

Purpose Recent years, Zhongshan School of Medicine,Sun Yat-Sen University, encourages undergraduate to take part in the scientific research early, in order to cultivate their creative thought as well as research ability. However, as members of this college, we feel that our laboratory safety concern, especially in biosafety, is not enough. With this idea, we carried out a survey among the undergraduate in our school, expecting to find out the truth and solution. Objects and Methods 293 students from Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University on September 22th, 2016 Methods The anonymous questionnaire was of our own design. Respondents were the students from Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University. A total of 472 questionnaires were distributed, and 293 questionnaires were collected, the effective recovery rate was 62% . Statistical analysis We used SO JUMP, a kind of questionnaire design and data analysis website, to rebuild our questionnaire online. Then, we imported the original questionnaire data based on the data we got. Finally we obtained the results below.

· Personal information
Our survey mainly focuses on junior students, including Clinical Medicine, Prevent Medicine and Laboratory Medicine Specialty. To our surprise, although almost all the students take the same courses, they held a different view on whether they had received biosafety courses.


· Biosafety Education
Most of the undergraduates, accounted for nearly 66%, briefly learned the concept of biosafety. However, a majority of them had no knowledge of biosafety level, the differences between biosafety cabinet and clean bench, etc. To our surprise, a vast majority of respondents don’t know what is GMOs.


· Protection Standard
Although laboratory safety regulations are of great importance, some of them didn’t obey them, such as wearing lab coat in lab, not using smart phone inside lab, not to drink or eat in lab, which causes potential crisis.


· Treatment of accident
Majority of the undergraduates have an awareness of finding professional for help, and most of them learn how to deal with chemical poisoning, however, students who have no idea of how to treat with some accidents such as breakage or overflow of culture or infectious substances, and broken centrifuge tube, account for a large portion.


· Advice
As it is shown below, most of them realize the importance of biosafety knowledge. And what shocks us is that a vast majority of undergraduates are looking forward to learning biosafety, concerning that our college is lack of related lessons for undergraduates.

In conclusion, Zhongshan School Of Medicine, SYSU, has offered a great scientific research platform for undergraduate to develop their ability towards science. However, there is a room for the college to improve biosafety administration as well as publicity among undergraduates. We, HP, at the same time, contribute our survey result to the Biosafety Committee Of Sun Yat-Sen University, and we are very glad to receive their approval and concern to carry out a biosafety lessons towards undergraduate students in the resent semester.

Questionnaire Report2:

The questionnaire is about the knowledge of MSC, stem cell therapy and clinical trial.
Questionnaire2—Investigation Report on the knowledge of MSCs, stem cell therapy and clinical trial.PDF

Objects and Methods 66 citizens around the Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center on October 7th, 2016 Methods The anonymous questionnaire was of our own design. Respondents were selected by random sampling in our investigation. A total of 100 questionnaires were distributed, and 66 questionnaires were collected, the effective recovery rate was 66%. Statistical analysis We used SO JUMP, a kind of questionnaire design and data analysis website, to rebuild our questionnaire online. Then, we imported the original questionnaire data based on the data we got. Finally we obtained the results below.

· General demographic situation
- Age structure
The survey included all the age group and different education level. The detailed population distribution is revealed below.


- Education level


· Cognition of MSCs
The statistics showed below indicate that only 13.64% of interviewees understand MSCs clearly. However, when comes to the “Umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells storing”, 75.76% of them know it, with 59.09% of them hold a positive attitude towards it. Besides, a majority of respondents have no idea whether there are MSCs therapeutic products in Chinese market.

Q1: Do you know what is MSCs?


Q2: Have you heard about umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells storing? Do you think it is useful?


Q3: Are there any MSCs related medical products in the Chinese market?


· Cognition of clinical trial
To our surprise, about 78.79% of respondents have no knowledge of the fact that the subject who receives treatment that in clinical trail do not need to pay for it. However, most of them have an awareness of protecting their interest during the clinical trail, with 83.33% of them pay great attention on the understanding of the informed consent.

Q4: Should the patients pay for their clinical trails?


Q5: Because of the certain condition of a patient, a doctor advised him to use a medicine, which is undergoing a clinical trial. If you are the family of the patient, will you read all the details on the informed consent carefully?


· Awareness of cell therapy
Generally speaking, the public hold a relatively positive attitude towards cell therapy development, and when it comes to the deficiencies China faced with in the matter of stem cell curing, a majority of them hold the view that the publicity strength need to be improved, causing us to make a simple MSC booklet and a video, hoping to increase public awareness through simple but effective methods.

Q6: What’s your attitude towards stem cell used in the disease curing?


Q7: What deficiencies does China face in the matter of stem cell treatment?

A Review

For further understanding the methods of enhancing the chemotsxis of MSCs, we read a lot of literatures and wrote a review in Chinese, contributing to an academic journal.


You can also see the whole review in PDF version.

Internet: WeChat Official Accounts

To introduce synthetic biology, iGEM and what we are doing with MSCs, we set several official account of SYSU-MEDICINE but only one of them we used frequently – WeChat. We wrote many interesting easy-understanding articles for the public containing aspects of MSCs, synthetic biology, math modeling and human practices. In total, we have sent out 12 articles showed below, 236 people focus on us and the whole reading times are over 10,000 times.



What makes these articles so interesting is that we connected boring knowledge to interesting news and Chinese traditional culture. We try to talk with the public that synthetic biology is not far away, which has been on our side. We try to discuss with the public that MSCs therapy is neither a monster nor a catholicon, which is a new method to fight with some diseases. We try to encourage students not to be like a frog at the bottom of a well, who need to go out and discover the world.


Want to learn more? Scan the QR code and focus on us.