Team:Jilin China/Integrated Practices
Human Practices
To improve the feasibility of our project and stimulate public interests in our work, we did the following human practices. First, we held meetings with experts in cancer-therapy research to get academic advices on our project. After finishing a sketch of our project plan, we made surveys among faculties in cancer research and attend a cancer summit in Changchun to get suggestions and comment about the feasibility and safety of our plan. Next, we discussed with some professors in law to understand better the potential biosafety issues of our project. All these work helped us make great improvement of our project. To help people understand more about cancer therapies and our project, we attended a HUST-Cheering meeting, did a TED presentation and were interviewed by some local TV programs, including the Jilin University Television. Furthermore, we made online games, established a public Wechat platform and a twitter account to get feedback from the general public on the internet. To stimulate the interests in science among high school students, we gave a seminar on synthetic biology and our project in a local high school.
1.Meetings With Experts
Ying Xu: Chronic Inflammation and Tumor
1.Meetings With Experts
Lecture: Chronic Inflammation and Tumor
Place: Computer Building A521 Auditorium
Professor Xu, got a bachelor's and master's degree from Jilin University in 1982 and 1985 respectively, and received a doctor's degree from the department of Computer Science at the university of Colorado in 1991. Now he is in the board of University of Georgia and a famous scholar in science and technology, the director of the center for systems biology research at the University of Georgia. In 2009 he was awarded as a "Changjiang Scholar", the chair professor at Jilin University. In 2012, he was recruited as a Jilin university professor in "one thousand plan". Professor Xu is a world-class expert in computational biologist, bioinformatics, cancer research and so on. He has made quite a few significant contributions in the field of bioinformatics, for example: (a) biological pathways and the calculation method of networks and model research (b) cancer of bioinformatics (c) comparative genome analysis (d) Protein structure prediction and modeling. The papers he published had more than 40 H-Index. He got the Distinguished Scholar of Georgia at 2003, and was selected as American Association for Advancement of Science Fellow.
In the lecture, professor Xu introduced their recent research progress. They investigated the transcriptomes of different tumor tissue and make big data analysis. They made two major discoveries. One is that all the tumors went through the process of chronic inflammation, but not all of the chronic inflammation can lead to cancer; and the other is that the basis of tumor proliferation is Fenton reaction. The following are some PPT slides from his lecture:
1.Meetings With Experts
Three different types of inflammation:
1.Meetings With Experts
Difference between CPIs(cancer-prone inflammations) and Clls(cancer-independent inflammations):
1.Meetings With Experts
1.The difference of CD4 (Transition from blue to red means the level is more and more low)
2.The difference of inflammation factor
1.Meetings With Experts
Finally, professor Xu suggested some useful suggestions to prevent cancers:
First: Stay away from meat, red meat have higher iron content, which is the main force of Fenton reaction;
Second: Stay away from alcohol, especially the person who would show red face after drinking, the body is telling you not to drink;
Third: Male should make regular blood donation to help prevent accumulation of iron in the body; women don't have to bother before menopause.
1.Meetings With Experts
1.Meetings With Experts
On December 17, 2015, professor Zhe Li was invited to give a seminar at the 13, 14 Tang Class forum at the Life Sciences Building.
Professor Li got his bachelor degree from the department of genetics at Fudan University in 1992, went to the United States in 1995 and got his Ph. D. training at the laboratory of Nancy A. Speck, a world-class expert at the research field of blood and transcription factors. In 2003, he got his Ph. D. degree in molecular and cell biology at the Dartmouth College, school of medicine. During his Ph. D. training, he made a systematic study of hematopoietic differentiation, GATA 1 transcription factor and leukemia, and published many research articles at high-impact journals, such as Nature Genetics, Blood, Cancer Cell and Genes Dev. In 2009, he became an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and continued his research at the differentiation of hematopoietic system and the molecular mechanism of leukemia and cancer biology. He has established a variety of animal models, made outstanding contributions at the pathogenesis of cancer research and treatment, and he has received many national funds in the United States, so that his research has been well funded.
Professor Li introduced the current research trends of tumor prevention and treatment, made in-depth discussions for cancer stem cells, tumor biomarker, the relationships between the tumor and inflammation. In addition, professor Li also talked about his expectations for good students, which are “motivation”, “detail”, and “attitude”. Professor Li is an excellent scientist, and we would like to follow his path and make our contribution to the scientific research.
2.Survey
With the aim of helping people understand solid tumors and synthetic biology, we did a survey with related questions in August 2016.Among 179 people completing the questionnaire, about 79% of them were between 18~30 years old, and most of them have bachelor’s degrees. However, most of them knew almost nothing about solid tumors.
2.Survey
Besides, more than half of them knew nothing about the therapies to treat solid tumors and only 10% of them know something about novel therapies, such as immunotherapy or therapies with the assistance of modified microbes. To the potential application of synthetic biology in the treatment of solid tumors, people’s opinions were uncertain.
2.Survey
Because their knowledge about solid tumors and the new achievements was very limited, many people worried the behavior of the microbes inside human body. They thought that it was difficult to control the proliferation of microbes in vivo, which might cause some side effects. Many people held the belief that there were many other severe problems that remained unknown if the microbes were introduced into human bodies. Some people also thought that the efficacy of using protein drugs to cure solid tumors was limited.
In conclusion, even in the well-educated population, the knowledge of solid tumors was not widespread. About curing solid tumors by the means of synthetic biology, many people questioned the risk of the introduction of bacteria into the bodies and the efficiency of this approach. We could learn from the results that it is important to raise public awareness of the threat of solid tumors, and it will be very helpful if we could promote the public interest in curing solid tumors with the aids of synthetic biology.
Changchun International forum of Oncobiology and Translational Medicine
On June.19th, 2016, Jilin_China Team attended Changchun International forum of Oncobiology and Translational Medicine. We interviewed the experts in cancer biology about the current trends and newly developed methods of treating solid tumors. In addition, we also asked their advices on our project.
International Forum
Professor Yun Dai from Jilin University gave a lecture about precise targeted therapy and drug-resistance in hematologic malignancies. We consulted him about drug-resistance. He told us there are two kinds of drug-resistance: primary resistance and long-term resistance. He also used one repressor named HDAC as example. It has curative effect to treat neoplastic hematologic disorder, but it has unsatisfactory result to treat solid tumors. Although HDAC is effective in vitro, it still needs more experiments to be verified. He also mentioned that if we want to develop a real drug, we should consider safety tests, pharmacology researches and clinical trials as well.
International Forum
Professor Cheshi Chen from Kunming Institute Of Zoology, CAS, gave a lecture about the development of new animal models for breast cancers. He discussed four kinds of common animal models: spontaneous animal model, experimental animal model, implanted tumor model and PDX model. He also mentioned some alternative animal models of breast cancers in addition to these commonly used laboratory mice.
Assistant Professor Boyi Gan from the University of Texas MD discussed energy metabolism and sensing in cancer. We asked him some questions about current cancer therapies. He told us that although radiotherapy and chemotherapy have low targeting, these two therapies are still major treatments in clinic application. Some new methods, such as targeted therapy and immunization therapy, may demonstrate better targeting effects, but they still have many weaknesses. Targeted therapy is designed to treat patients with specific mutations, so the rates of mutation largely determine the efficacy of the treatment. Immunization therapy can educate patient’s own immune system to cure cancer, and it is now widely used in clinic. He suggested that our group should verify whether bifidobacterium could educate human immune system.
International Forum
Assistant Professor Xiangwei Wu from the University of Texas MD gave a lecture about early-disseminated tumor cells as a biomarker for colorectal cancer early detection. A specific feature of the apoptin used in our project is that it only enters into nucleus of solid tumors but stay in cytoplasm of normal cells. We consulted him whether the apoptin could be used as a biomarker as well. He said that we should first use nude mice to figure out whether MCF-7 cells can multiply in vivo by subcutaneous injection. Next, we should use CTC cellular immunostaining to figure whether the apoptin could work well.
Professor Songyang Zhou from Sun Yat-sen University mainly discussed about telomere signaling networks in aging and cancer. Associate Professor Yong Xu, Professor Sheng Zhang, Professor Hui Zheng discussed human obesity, huntingtin and Alzheimer’s Diseases with us.
Human Practices
Human Practices
