Parasite detector project propels team to success at international competition

Students develop parasite test device that could be used by communities in developing countries to detect harmful diseases<em> – News</em>

Wednesday 10 November 2010
By Colin Smith

A project to develop a prototype device for detecting water-borne parasites that cause the disease Schistosomiasis has helped a team of undergraduates from Imperial College London to win a range of awards at an international competition, held this month.

The team, comprising ten second and third year students from the Departments of Bioengineering and Life Sciences at the College, won two major prizes and a gold medal in the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (IGEM), for their prototype device that detects Schistosoma parasites that cause the disease Schistosomiasis. This disease affects 200 million people worldwide. In children, it can cause anaemia, impaired learning ability and stunted growth. In adults, it causes liver disease and bladder cancer, accounting for an estimated 280,000 deaths around the world every year.

The team say their Parasight device could one day provide a rapid and cost effective way of detecting if Schistosoma parasites are present in water supplies, so that people can avoid contact with contaminated water. They hope Parasight could be used in developing countries, where time consuming and expensive lab tests on water quality are out of reach for most communities. The team say the Parasight device could also be reconfigured to detect other parasites so that researchers could map the spread of many different types of diseases.

Parasight consists of a container with harmless bacteria called Bacillus subtilis, normally found in soil, which the team modified so that it detects a molecule called a protease that is excreted by the Schistosoma parasite. The protease leaves a specific peptide on the surface of Bacillus subtilis, which is like an alarm bell, signalling the bacterium that the Schistosoma parasite is there. This triggers a chemical reaction in the water sample, turning it yellow to alert the user that Schistosoma parasites are present.

Imperial's victorious iGEM 2010 team

At the competition, which attracted 128 teams from around the world, the Imperial undergraduates won the Best Wiki category for their online research diary developed for their project. They also received the Best Human Practices Advance category prize for their work with researchers from the London School of Economics, exploring the ethical issues surrounding their project and developing an outreach program for schools to showcase their research. The team were also gold medal finalists in the Grand Prize section of the competition.

Ben Miller, third year undergraduate from the Department of Bioengineering, says: “There are millions of people in developing countries whose water supply is contaminated with parasites that bring disease and misery to so many. We want to develop the Parasight device further, so that it can provide an inexpensive, rapid and easy-to-use-tool that enables people to take control of their health and monitor water in their communities, so that diseases like Schistosomiasis can be eradicated in the long term.”

Harriet Gliddon, third year undergraduate from the Department of Biochemistry, adds:

“iGEM is a really unique experience because it compels undergraduates to come up with their own project, as well as engage with the downstream effects of their research. It also brings students from a variety of academic backgrounds together, something that hardly - if at all - happens in most Bachelor degrees these days. The most significant learning curve for me was making decisions as a team, allowing us to take responsibility for the direction the project was taking. A great end to the whole process was the Jamboree where we met students with similar interests from all over the world, which was a truly inspiring experience."

Professor Richard Kitney, from Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering, who co-led Imperial’s students along with Professor Paul Freemont and Dr Geoff Baldwin from the Department of Life Sciences, congratulated the team, says:

“Every year the iGEM competition gets harder and harder as the level of competition increases in quality. Yet again, an Imperial team has done so well, winning two of the major prizes in the competition and being one of the top finalists in the grand prize. The iGEM competition gives us a huge platform from which to promote the emerging field of Synthetic Biology to the public. So I am particularly pleased that our students received the Best Human Practices Advance prize, a new category that acknowledges the work that student’s do in their iGEM projects to address issues such as ethics and safety of their work, which is an important aspect of this emerging science.”

Professor Paul Freemont concludes: “The iGEM competition enables students to dream up really interesting projects that we as established researchers might never have thought of. Most importantly, these projects grow and develop long after the initial euphoria of the iGEM win has died away. The 2007 team came up with a biological sensor that catches infections on hospital catheters before they harm patients, which we are now developing with our partners into a real device. We also aim to further develop the Parasight device, which shows so much potential.”

The IGEM competition is an annual event that is held each year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA. It gives students a taste of Synthetic Biology, which is an emerging field of science in which engineers work with molecular bioscientists to produce biologically based engineering parts, by modifying bacterial DNA.

This is the seventh year that the international IGEM competition has been run by MIT, and the fifth year that Professor Kitney and Freemont have taken an Imperial team to the finals. Tonight, the team’s success will be celebrated by researchers at the official launch of the Imperial College Institute for Systems and Synthetic Biology, which is also holding its annual symposium.