Plant Vs HCHO

A war of plant and HCHO

★Presentation: Room 34-101, Saturday 12:30 PM, Session 2     ★Poster: Sunday, #13 (Stata)

introduction of our projectCancer globally kills eight million people each year, a number unchanged over the past five decades. The current paradigm for cancer treatment involves non-specific therapies such as chemotherapy and radiation that cannot differentiate between cancerous and healthy tissue. Scientists in the rising field of cancer immunotherapy are applying bionanomedical techniques to harness the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer. During primary tumor development, a patient’s innate immune function is active. However, tumors have developed a multitude of immune system inhibitors, which suppress a patient’s immune system and promote complete tumor development. We propose a novel vaccine delivery system (BactoVax) of tumor associated antigens and immunomodular agents encapsulated within probiotic bacteria, akin to those found in commercial yogurt. The proposed vaccine should breach the immunological barrier posed by primary tumors through the activation of macrophages and dendritic cells (DCs) in order to teach a patient’s immune system to recognize cell surface antigens and markers that distinguish tumors from healthy tissue. This process of “training” the immune system to target cancer stems from the adaptive immune function, which exploits the molecular properties of cytotoxic T lymphocyte.

We expect that these novel biosensors, together with the plug-in devices, will serve as intriguing synthetic biological tools for diverse practical applications.