Biotechnology Products
Week 1:
#1 Asthma
The main causes of asthma are airborne allergens, cold air, physical activity, or strong emotions and stress. Asthma is an inflammatory disease of the lung. This inflammatory process can occur along the entire airway from the nose to the lung. Once the airway becomes swollen and inflamed, it becomes narrower, and less air gets through to the lung tissue. This causes symptoms like wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and trouble breathing. During an asthma attack, the muscles around the airways tighten up and the asthma symptoms become even worse than usual. The problems with the current therapy is that there is no long term solution, but inhalers are the short-time. A possible biotech product which you could make to solve the problem is a vaccine or gene therapy biologics, or something to help against airway becoming inflamed and swollen, which causes less air to be able to go through the lung tissue.
#2 Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer's disease results from a combination of genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors that affect the brain over time. The problem with the current treatment is that there isn’t a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. A possible biotech product which you could make to solve the problem could be genetic therapy, which might be able to cure Alzheimer's.
#3 (Rheumatoid) Arthritis
The cause of Rheumatoid Arthritis is a faulty immune system. It starts attacking healthy joint tissues. The problem with current therapy is that there is no cure, but medicines that helps the arthritis. It can have severe consequences however. A possible biotech product which you could make to solve the problem is a vaccine, pill, injection, or gene therapy. Something that can cure the immune system and not have negative side effects.
#4 HIV
The cause of the HIV disease is that it destroys CD4 cells. Your immune system weakens, and you can't fight off disease as well. The problem with the current cure is that there is no permanent cure. A possible biotech product which you could make to solve the problem is vaccines could be used to make the HIV completely gone.
Our Proposal:
Problem:
Asthma is a disease affecting the airways that carry air to and from your lungs. People who suffer from this chronic condition (long-lasting or recurrent) are said to be asthmatic.The inside walls of an asthmatic airways are swollen or inflamed. This swelling or inflammation makes the airways extremely sensitive to irritations and increases your susceptibility to an allergic reaction.
Asthma attacks can be mild, moderate, severe and very severe. At onset, an asthma attack does allow enough air to get into the lungs, but it does not let the carbon dioxide leave the lungs at a fast enough rate. Carbon dioxide - poisonous if not expelled - can build up in the lungs during a prolonged attack, lowering the amount of oxygen getting into your bloodstream.
Current Limitations/Present need:
The current limitations are that there are no long term solutions. Currently, there are inhalers, but inhalers are short-time. People who have asthma are in need of a long term solution. Asthma is not so much "treated" as it is "controlled". As a chronic, long-term disease, there is no cure. However, there are tools and medicines to help you control asthma. Inhalers do cure the pain short term, or about twelve hours, but it’s a pain for patients to have to redo the medicine daily.
Your proposed solution/product:
Once the airway becomes swollen and inflamed, it becomes narrower, and less air gets through to the lung tissue. We want to create a product to help the airway from becoming inflamed and/or swollen, which causes less air to be able to go through the lung tissue. This would help asthma because it would theoretically cure all of the pain involved with asthma. We would achieve this by making a medicine that we could put in liposomes. A liposome is a tiny bubble (vesicle), made out of the same material as a cell membrane (phospholipids and proteins). Liposomes can be filled with drugs, and used to deliver drugs for cancer and other diseases. Membranes are usually made of phospholipids, which are molecules that have a head group and a tail group. Because the cell membrane and the liposome are made of the same things, the liposome can insert the medicine into the cell. We could put the medicine filled liposomes into the throat, and soak into the cells, curing it for a longer period of time. The problems with this cure is that we aren’t sure if we can solve it permanently, or the medicine would have to be reapplied in the future. This will be used with a drug delivery system, which refers to approaches, formulations, technologies, and systems for transporting a pharmaceutical compound in the body as needed to safely achieve its desired therapeutic effect.
Citations:
http://www.aaaai.org/conditions-and-treatments/asthma
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/asthma/basics/definition/con-20026992
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/asthma
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/asthma/treatment
PDF from Dr. Duzgunes:
Virtual Mentor and Credentials:
Nejat Duzgunes is our virtual mentor. He has a Ph.D. in biophysics from the state university of New York at Buffalo, he was a research scientist and adjunct professor at UCSF for 12 years, and Duzgunes is currently professor and chair of microbiology at the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry, and director of a research laboratory working on the therapy of oral cancer and HIV/AIDS. Dr. Duzgunes suggested that we use liposomes, and in order to test them, we could use animal models. He also mentioned developing “organoids.” We are going to use his ideas of liposomes as our biotech product. A liposome is a minute spherical sac of phospholipid molecules enclosing a water droplet, especially as formed artificially to carry drugs or other substances into the tissues.