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UW Biotech Student Design Team Competes at Harvard

Note: This article is hosted here for archival purposes only. It does not necessarily represent the values of the Iron Warrior or Waterloo Engineering Society in the present day.

On Saturday November 2, the University of Waterloo Designed Nanoscale Assembly (uwDNA) team competed at BIOMOD, an annual biomolecular design competition for undergrads held at Harvard University. With 30 teams present from across the globe, including China, Japan, the U.S., and Europe, uwDNA was one of just two Canadian teams, the other coming from the University of Calgary. Overall, it was very exciting to be competing at the event. The team showed a lot of skill, passion, and mettle in what was a very interesting and innovative crowd of projects.

In just our second competition, we received a bronze project award. Our project was entirely student-motivated, though of course it would not have been possible without our mentors and supervisors, Dr. Aucoin, Dr. Siu and Dr. Park. The team would also like to thank WEEF, the Dean of Engineering, the University of Waterloo Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology, and the Provost for their generous support.

Our project was one of several presented which were geared towards drug delivery for the treatment of cancer. The idea was based on boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT), a well-explored option as a cancer treatment. What makes BNCT such an attractive and strongly pursued cancer treatment is its ability to selectively destroy tumour cells, something traditional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy are not capable of.  The two challenges in the development of BNCT treatments have been to selectively target tumour cells to which the boron must be delivered, and to ensure that enough boron gets into the tumour cells for the treatment to be effective.

Our team was successful in designing a system that delivered on both fronts: Using a gold nanoparticle loaded with boronophenylalanine (BPA) layers and cancer-targeting folic acid, our system would selectively target tumour cells and ensure that sufficient boron got into those cells. In combination with last year’s project, self-assembling DNA walkers, we would be able to attach other nanoscale cargoes for imaging functionality, such as iron oxide nanoparticles or quantum dots.

In the lab, we were able to synthesize and characterize our DNA walkers and BPA-layered gold nanoparticle.  Due to time and resource constraints, the rest of the project remains a possibility for future work. Regardless, the idea was very well received by everyone at BIOMOD, and the team was encouraged to pursue the work further.

The team worked hard all year to prepare a project for this year’s BIOMOD. In addition to designing and executing the project, teams were required to prepare a YouTube video, a project ‘wiki’ (a web-based detailed technical write-up of the project) and a 10-minute summary presentation. To address these requirements, the team is made up of research, experimental, business, software and media sub-teams, with several members involved in more than one.

The research team develops and proposes project ideas and is also instrumental in procedural development by constructing the project and characterizing every step along the way. An extension of the research team, the experimental team is responsible for carrying out procedures and executing the project in the lab. uwDNA’s business team ensures that we receive adequate funding for our projects. The software team is tasked with building a creative interface for the wiki and team website, as well as modeling our nanoscale ideas in CADnano. The media team collaborates with software on the website and handles all social media updates, but their key responsibility is putting together a phenomenal YouTube video about the project.

Primarily made up of nanotechnology engineering students and science students specializing in biology-related fields, we are excited about new developments in biotechnology! We are always interested in new, enthusiastic members and encourage students from all years and faculties to join us. There is plenty of opportunity to get involved in all of our teams, so don’t be shy!

All in all, it has been a very successful second year, and we look forward to building on that success at next year’s BIOMOD. With new project ideas on the table already, we hope to commence lab work in the winter. See you next year Harvard—we’ll be ready.

 

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