Team:MIT/Project

MOTIVATION

In the last week of January 2014, 12 MIT undergraduate students trudged through the brutal Boston climate, on their way to the last iGEM training session. After being accepted to the MIT iGEM 2014 team, these brave few - mostly freshmen, and a few sophomores - eagerly returned to campus during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), to undergo laboratory and safety training, in order to prepare them for the competition ahead.

At the final meeting for IAP, when their advisors asked them to come up with a bold idea for an iGEM project, no one thought that the ambitious suggestion of “curing Alzheimer’s disease” would lead them on the research journey of a lifetime.

But here we are, 9 months later, those 12 MIT undergraduate students - now plus 3 high school students! - who pursued our iGEM 2014 project “The Diagnosis and Treatment of Alzheimer’s disease”.

At first, our motivations were based in a broader sense of the severity of Alzheimer’s disease. We understood that it was a prominent problem and none of us knew of any proven treatment options. Our dedication became deepened when we read the statistics and testimonials of Alzheimer’s patients and their families.

6th leading cause of death in the US. Affects nearly 30 million patients and caretakers worldwide. Alzheimer’s disease was more serious that any of us had originally believed. Suddenly, we had a deeper connection to our project - if we could successfully “cure” this affliction, we could positively impact the lives of millions of people around the world.

And so we started where any good scientist would - with the work of others. We read numerous papers and publications, pranced about the internet, searching for information on how to tackle this disease, and hoping to improve our knowledge and understanding of the current state of the art.

Then, armed with a more complete understanding of the current tactics and ideas used in Alzheimer's research, we sought the opinions of professionals in the field. We contacted several scientists and doctors, two of whom we interviewed face-to-face (more information here) and asked them about the currents needs of researchers, doctors and patients who deal with Alzheimer’s disease. The insight we obtained led us to the decision to address the most prominent limitations in the fight against Alzheimer’s: the inability to properly diagnose and treat the disease.

Throughout the course of this project, each of us has become closer to the cause - iGEM became more than a competition and our project was more than a task. Through iGEM, we were able to use the tools of synthetic biology to address a severe affliction, and to create a system that has the potential to be meaningful to both the scientific community and the general public as a whole. We were driven by a desire to successfully complete our project, and produce a fully characterized and functional system, for the sake of its implications for the future, and for the lives of many.

Although the competition is over, we hope that our work can be used to advance the field of Alzheimer’s research. We hope that we might have made something that could impact the lives of Alzheimer’s sufferers and their families sometime in the future. It was this hope that kept us motivated throughout our research journey, and it is this hope that we wish to share with you and many others, that one day, we may all see a world free from the pain of Alzheimer’s disease.