Team:Imperial College London/Project1

This year the Imperial College iGEM team has developed an innovative, self-contained drug fabrication and delivery system. In our 'E.ncapsulator', Escherichia coli will be engineered not only to efficiently manufacture important biopharmaceuticals, but also to coat and protect protein based drugs until release in the small intestine.

We have divided the manufacturing process into 3 modules. The first module involves engineering E. coli to synthesise the protein drug of interest. In the second module, the E. coli coats itself in a layer of colanic acid. The third module, genome deletion, is where genetic material of the bacteria is cut.

The self-encapsulation of a synthetic biology chassis represents a completely novel and innovative approach to biopharmaceutics. Throughout the project we have followed an engineering approach that incorporates modular design, detailed modelling and simulation as well as systematic integration.