The students from Central South University won silverfortheirHEPASHIELD project at the 2018 International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM Competition 2018) which was held at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston on Oct.25.

iGEM Competition 2018 attracted 343 teams from 42 countries and regions across the worldincluding the foreign teams from MIT, Harvard University, Cambridge University, Oxford University and other world-class universitiesas well as 103Chineseteams from Tsinghua University, Peking University, Shanghai Jiaotong University,Central South University, etc. In brief,the competition was considerably fierce.

Based on the platform of the School of Life Sciences of Central South University, the CSU-CHINA team is led by Dean Xia Kun and Associate Dean Li Shanni, and instructed by Prof.Li Jiada. The team is composed of 14 students from the School of Life Sciences, Xiangya School of Medicine, School of Pharmacy, School of Aerospace and Aeronautics, etc. Theirproject, titled as HEPASHIELD,aiming at atargeted therapyforliver cancer,uses synthetic biology to establish an artificial gene loop in mammalian cells and develop a two-switch gene loop that targets liver cancer cells toensure lethal effect. The highlight of the project is to use the designed dual-switch gene loop to effectively improve the specificity of drug treatment and reduce thetoxic andside effects of traditional cancer treatmentso as to provide new ideas for targeted therapies forliver cancer.

Source: School of Life Sciences