Team:Queens/Sponsors

Team Background

The Queen's Genetically Engineered Machine Team (QGEM for short), is a brand new team at Queen's University this year. We all hail from different parts of the country and different educational backgrounds, with the exception of all being in the sciences. Our team is comprised of Biology, Life Sciences, Biochemical Engineering, and Engineering Chemistry students, along with an equally varied lineup of faculty advisors. While, we are new to iGEM this year, we are putting forth our best efforts with our project and are looking forward to presenting our results at the Jamboree this year.

Project Background

This year, the Queen’s iGEM team is exploring a new synthetic biology approach to treat atherosclerosis. The purpose of our project is to engineer E.coli cells to target and deliver drugs to the site of atherosclerotic plaques. This will be accomplished by designing a binding system that allows E.coli to adhere to plaque, an inducible effector system that produces and releases specific drugs to site of plaques, and a termination system that detaches the E.coli from the plaque and triggers self-destruction. For a more detailed explanation and breakdown please see our Project page.