Description

Importance of our Project

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most ubiquitous types of cancer in Hong Kong, with approximately 10,000 new cases diagnosed annually. To our advantage, a notable feature of CRC is its detection and treatment; it takes years to develop, and early detection can significantly improve prognosis, with successful treatment rates exceeding 90%. However, the current mainstream screening methods, such as colonoscopy, FOBT, and FIT, have their limitations of being invasive and inconvenient; therefore, we were inspired to create a convenient, practical and non-invasive at-home kit for CRC detection.

Project Aim

Our project aims to create a tool that detects CRC before it has a chance to endanger anyone, a method that allows at-home screening, while having the accuracy and affordability of other conventional screening methods. With an easily accessible diagnosis test, we hope to reduce the mortality rate of CRC.

Project Mechanism

Our specifically designed kit utilises the mechanism of the toehold switch's interaction with miRNA to create coloured proteins and detect anomalies created by CRC cells. A toehold switch is synthesised from adding the gene of interest into plasmids, then inserting recombinant plasmids into the E.coli. Toehold switches can easily be designed to bind to any miRNA of our choice, making it a good option as our detector, whereas E.coli duplicates at a high rate, allowing for fast engineering cycles to test and tweak.