Introduction: Overview
Abstract
Type I diabetes mellitus (T1DM) affects more than 17 million people worldwide, and current treatments for T1DM, known as insulin therapy , require continued insulin injection, diet control, and constant monitoring of blood sugar. Gene therapy methods that restore insulin production in non-pancreatic cells might provide a one-shot cure for T1DB. We propose a gene therapy for T1DM using an adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector that transfects somatic cells with an insulin gene controlled by a glucose-sensitive promoter, thus potentially restoring glucose-regulated insulin production in diabetic patients. Preliminary tests are conducted on cell lines to assess the efficiency of the therapy.
Background
Interested? Click on any of the icons below to get more information on Diabetes and Gene Therapy.
Achievements
Bronze Medal:
- We have registered our team, have a great summer, and plan to have fun at the Giant Jamboree.
- We have successfully completed and submitted the iGEM 2014 Judging form.
- We have created and shared a Description of the team's project using the iGEM wiki and the team's parts using the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
- We have already planned to present a Poster and Talk at the iGEM Jamboree.
- We have designed and built four standard biobricks in our project,
Silver Medal:
- Experimentally validate that more than one new BioBrick Part of our own design and construction works as expected.
- We have documented the characterization of all the part in the Main Page section of that Part's/Device's Registry entry.
- We have submitted our four new parts to the iGEM Parts Registry.
- Beyond the bench, we did the team communication, talked to young students, reached out to Fellow Scholars and made a movie explaining the good and bad of the virus.
Gold Medal:
- We assisted Tsinghua-A in preparing their parts for submission and helping them with shipping.
- We provided consultation to BNU-China when they started their first team.
- We sent 8 of our parts from our team DNA repository to NUDT-China team to help them start their experiments. Some of these parts were created by Team Tsinghua for iGEM 2013 and others were from the DNA distribution kit from 2013.
Policy and Practices
Click here for a link to our Policy Practices page (Human Practices)