Team:Imperial College London

For iGEM 2009 the Imperial College London team present to you The E.ncapsulator: A versatile manufacture and delivery platform by which therapeutics can be reliably targeted to the gut.

Our E.coli chassis progresses through a series of defined stages culminating in the production of a safe, inanimate pill. This sequential process involves drug production, self-encapsulation in a protective coating and genome deletion. The temporal transition through each of these stages has been industrially optimised by both media and temperature.

The E.ncapsulator provides a chassis to deliver any biologically synthesisable compound and bypasses the need for expensive purification, packaging and storage treatments. This makes it an attractive candidate for commercial pill development and demonstrates the huge potential of synthetic biology in the sphere of manufacturing.