Students of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Tirupati, struck gold in their maiden attempt at the international ‘Giant Jamboree’ competition conducted by the International Genetically Engineered Machine (i-GEM) Foundation in Boston (US) recently.
The event held during October 31-November 4 drew 375 shortlisted teams worldwide and IISER Tirupati was one of the 57 teams to win gold. The Tirupati team comprising Uttara Khatri, Mrugank Dake, Amartya Pal, Megha Maria Jacob and Bhabesh Tripathy was supported by its Director Krishna N. Ganesh, Dean B.J. Rao and assistant professor of biology Raju Mukherjee.
The team won appreciation for proposing and showing that synthetically generated probacteria can specifically target colon cancer tumour and elicit lactic acid induced immuno-modulator IL-12 that targets the tumour itself. It is a tumour-induced suicide therapy.
Meanwhile, Minister of HRD Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank expressed his congratulations to the team and tweeted thus: “Extremely proud to share with you the achievements of IISER Tirupati students”, mentioning @IiserTirupati.
