Presentations 2018
Biology without Barriers
CAR T-Cell Therapy: CARD Approach
by Anne Berhe, Sayo Eweje, Jungho Gong, Sabino Maldonado, and Shreya Menon
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Project Description:
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is an innovative cancer immunotherapy that relies on reprogramming a patient’s own T-cells to recognize and attack cancerous cells. Though it is a promising alternative to currently available treatments, CAR T-cell therapy remains inaccessible to a large number of patients due to prohibitively high costs, an unequal distribution of treatment centers, and a lack of patient knowledge about treatment availability. To mitigate these issues, we propose the CARD approach: a multilevel granting system aimed at increasing CAR T-cell therapy accessibility by optimizing the manufacturing process, creating a more collaborative research environment, and establishing an open-access CAR gene database, all to ultimately reducing cost. In this presentation, we detail the three central aspects of the CARD approach and how they would work together to help provide CAR T-cell therapy to more patients in need.
The Exome Project
by Stephen Casper
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Project Description:
The Exome Project is a pitch for a nonprofit that will provide a unique service at the intersection of health, development, and genomic research. By sequencing the exomes of individuals in developing communities around the world for free, the project will be able to offer essential advice on health and family planning. And by selling the exomic data to private sector, it will support essential research and sustain itself financially.
Medflix
by Rachelle Ambroise, Giulio Deangeli, Esther Elonga, and Cristiano Peron
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Project Description:
In our project we aimed to create an innovative health care platform, in order to address many of the disparities that still remain in the US society regarding health care accessibility and affordability. Our platform, called Medflix, is going to consist in a online diagnostic service where patients from all over the country will be able to rapidly upload their data and symptoms, and receive a diagnosis from doctors for the most common and relevant diseases. Our hope is that our model will be able to offer them a better health care, while at the same time remaining affordable for everybody.
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Model for a Volunteering-Based Healthcare Platform
by Ralph Estanboulieh
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Project Description:
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Code for Life
BioBlocks: Crowd-Sourced Genomic Data Sharing
by Anthony Kang and Xiaotian Liao
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Project Description:
Across disciplines, data sharing has been one of the greatest challenges hindering researchers from addressing meaningful questions using innovative computational analysis. Although substantial efforts have been made to generate more open-source human genomic data, most research conducted has been limited to the general population and translates poorly to patient populations of unique gene regulation patterns. Our project proposes an incentivized blockchain to generate a secure database of de-identified and uniform genomic data accessible to clinical researchers. Much like the iGEM parts registry, the proposed blockchain approach takes advantage of crowd-sourced data from affiliated medical institutions in order to generate a database for genomic clinical data. The blockchain infrastructure ensures the integrity of the data, and processing of the data prior to addition to the blockchain will (1) de-identify the data to uphold the privacy of the patient and (2) convert the genomic data collected from a wide variety of institutions into a uniform format for streamlined data accessibility.
Predicting Folded Protein Structure with Machine Learning
by Daniel Sherman
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Project Description:
While significant improvement has been made in recent years towards determining the structures of natural proteins, the process of determining these structures remains complicated and costly. An awareness of protein structures informs aspects of biology from developing drugs to understanding pathologies. Therefore, to speed up the structural identification of proteins and to create structures of novel proteins, we propose the use of machine learning, based on foundational thermodynamic laws and tailored with known protein structures, to formulate a standard algorithmic process of predicting protein structures from their sequences alone.
Soft Robotics for Hand Rehabilitation (SoRHR)
by Alberta Boafo-Arko, Minh-Chau N. Le, and Javier Morales-Ferrer
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Project Description:
Stroke affects about 800,000 patients in the US annually. Many stroke patients recovered with motor impairments, needing rehabilitation treatment. Rehabilitation Robotic Devices have been developed to supplement traditional treatment. In this project, we aim to develop a portable, soft robotic hand rehabilitation device that can track patient's progress, provide feedback and augmentation.
Defending against Tropical Disease
Fighting Chagas Disease Using Ethically-Conscious Genetic Engineering Inspired by Pharmaceuticals
by Azra Atabay, Liceyl Lenny Paulas Condori, Mert Mestanoglu, Uriah Sanders, and Julian Stanley
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Project Description:
Chagas Disease is a neglected tropical disease that affects up to 8 million people globally, many of whom do not know they have the disease. Current approaches to limit Chagas disease include prevention with environmentally-harmful pesticides and treatment with harsh medications. We propose creating an environment within the Chagas parasite vector that mimics the environment created by approved pharmaceutical treatments by utilizing a gene-drive-based approach. Our presentation also includes a scalable computational model of the spread of gene drive hosted at https://github.com/uriahsanders/Gene-Drive-Simulation, and more information can be found on our wikipage at sites.google.com/view/limitingchagas.
Leishmaniasis
by Jessica DeVilla, Aaron Hodges, Mark Meneses, Tajrean Rahman, and Nathan Sharp
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Project Description:
Our project targets the neglected tropical disease known as Leishmaniasis, a parasitic infection that develops skin sores and internal damages from the bite of an infected sandfly. Through research and analysis, we’ve developed a four part approach on how to more effectively address this disease through Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Marketing. By building off of current prevention techniques, we offer an alternative method through the use of D-Limonene. In terms of the infection, we propose diagnosis through serologic assays, and treatment using medications like Amp B and Miltefosine. Finally, in order to raise more awareness of Leishmaniasis, we aim to market through military deployments, since troops stationed in foreign nations risk exposure to the disease.
Eco-Sustainability
Biomarkers for Climate Change
by Kanishk Mittal, Simon Shen, Eric Sun, and Kai Trepka
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Project Description:
Despite the existential risk posed by climate change, carbon monitoring is increasingly endangered by federal budget shortfalls and political fights. To continue to research carbon emissions in the absence of carbon-monitoring satellites, it is important to be able to calculate emissions levels using other measurements. Here, we propose the use of "climate change biomarkers," indicators of carbon emissions that don't rely on carbon-monitoring satellites, to find carbon emissions in the absence of direct monitoring. We develop and demonstrate a machine-learning model for finding and using climate change biomarkers to reliably calculate carbon emissions using only non-carbon ground-based and satellite data. Monitoring only a few indicative chemicals has applications beyond carbon monitoring, with the potential to cut monitoring costs with little loss of information.
Omnibus
by James Coleman, Alex Chin, Nestor Kachenko, Edward Kim, and Nkazi Nchinda
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Project Description:
Our project targets the neglected tropical disease known as Leishmaniasis, a parasitic infection that develops skin sores and internal damages from the bite of an infected sandfly. Through research and analysis, we’ve developed a four part approach on how to more effectively address this disease through Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Marketing. By building off of current prevention techniques, we offer an alternative method through the use of D-Limonene. In terms of the infection, we propose diagnosis through serologic assays, and treatment using medications like Amp B and Miltefosine. Finally, in order to raise more awareness of Leishmaniasis, we aim to market through military deployments, since troops stationed in foreign nations risk exposure to the disease.