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The Queen’s Genetically Engineered Machine (QGEM) team recently attended the annual International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in Paris, France and earned a Gold Medal, received the Best Education Special Award, and was nominated for the Best Therapeutics Project, Undergrad. These are Queen’s best results since the team was founded in 2009.

iGEM was established in 2004 at the Massachusetts Institute of ����ֱ��. It is a non-profit organization that aims to promote education and advancements in synthetic biology through an annual synthetic biology research competition, the largest of its type in the world. More than 450 universities competed this year.

Team Acting Director Sofia Leuchter (Department of Biology) says the win was significant as the Best Education Special Award category is one of the most competitive at the event.

“We actually didn’t think we were going to do very well because we were struggling with some of our experiments. We co-organized an event in Ottawa called the Great Canadian Meet-Up with the 10 other Canadian teams and were pitched our ideas to get feedback. We received some valuable advice about pitching our ideas and went back to the drawing board. We had to reevaluate how we were presenting our research, our ideas.”

The is a 26-student interdisciplinary, undergraduate design team at Queen’s University. It offers students a chance to learn beyond the textbook; they culture innovators and bacteria to re-engineer biology for new applications in medicine, the environment, and more.

“We have always been a very interdisciplinary team,” Leuchter, a third-year undergraduate student, explains. “While it’s an engineering competition, a lot of it comes down to molecular and biomedical techniques. So, our team features students from all over including life sciences, biotechnology, health sciences, chemical engineering, and more. Anyone can apply to be part of this team – it's about having a problem-solving mindset.”

Leuchter, who was supported by the and the Bartlett Student Initiatives Fund, explains their project featured a biofilm-disrupting therapeutic which is a big problem in patients suffering from cystic fibrosis. These patients are genetically predisposed to having bad infections in their lungs because of all the biochemical changes that happen because of the disease. These infections are notoriously difficult to get rid of because the biofilm acts as a physical and chemical barrier again antibiotics.

“We came up with a new way to tackle that through genetically engineering a patient’s host cells to basically sense certain signals that are specific to these infections and then release biofilm degrading enzymes to re-establish efficacy of antibiotics in the patient’s immune system.”

The main advantage of iGEM is that it provides the ability to connect teams with different biotech companies. Leuchter says there is much more work still to be done on their project including more experiments that are needed before it goes to a clinical trial. The team would like to continue this project for a second year.

“I personally think this opportunity is awesome because it’s so hard to get into research as an undergrad,” Leuchter says. “Partially it’s because people expect you to have experience before you have experience. There are also barriers like being able to travel from a smaller city to a larger city that has better facilities and research internships. This team is one of the best ways for people to get that first experience they need. It's such a hands-on learning experience. This is perfect for me because it’s managing and creating research rather than just doing research.”

Read more about the success of the QGEM team on the .