Big Idea

Arterial plaques can lead to heart disease, one of the major causes of death in developed countries. There isn't yet a good (also: non-invasive) solution for removal of these plaques. Our project would seek to develop a method of arterial plaque degradation.

The current state of the art in the field

Plaque degradation has been shown by R. erythropolis. The bacteria were encapsulated in alginate-based articifial cells (inkjet bioprinted and atomized). This strain produces cholesterolase and the encapsulated bacteria were shown to degrade cholesterol in vitro (Link). No known in vivo system with this sort of an approach yet.

Drawbacks included the production of H₂O₂. Cholesterol is also not the only component of arterial plaques (though a major one); would it be enough just to degrade cholesterol? (Also, are there any problems with degradation of the encapsulated bacteria that could lead to negative side effects?)

 How a synbio approach might have an impact on solving the problem

• Optimize encapsulation
  • Alginate (has it been used in vitro before?)
  • Cellulose sulphate ( "has been used to manufacture encapsulated cells as a pharmaceutical product at large scale and fulfilling Good Manufacturing Process (cGMP) standards. This was achieved by the company Austrianova in 2007.^{[49]" - Wikipedia)}
  • Inkjet vs. Atomization vs. ??

• Sensing system - how to localize the product (find the plaque and stay there) and target the plaque specifically

 Some possible ways forward + feasibility

(sorry I'm such a wiki-failure =\ I'll learn this!)

For Next Week:

• What do we need to sense?
• Turn from bioengineering to synthetic biology
• More consolidated plan
• Inject vs. atomization?
• What exactly about atherosclerosis are we attacking?