IISER-Tirupati wins Gold at iGEM global competition

Tirupati: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Tirupati team won Gold at the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) global competition held at Boston (USA). The team from IISER got this distinction in their first attempt itself. Every year nearly 6000 people dedicate their summer to iGEM projects in their native country laboratories and the shortlisted teams come together in the fall to present their research findings in a highly competitive annual Jamboree event. iGEM 2019 drew 375 shortlisted teams worldwide for a final competition at Boston from October 31 to November 4. Out of 57 Gold awardees, IISER Tirupati was one.

IISER Tirupati iGEM team proposed and showed that synthetically generated pro bacteria can specifically target colon cancer tumour and elicit lactic acid generated by the tumour induced immunomodulatory IL-12 that targets the tumour itself. It was a tumour induced suicide therapy. The team from IISER – T consists of Amartya Pal, Bhabesh Kumar Tripathy, Megha Maria Jacob, Mrugank Dake and Uttara Khatri. They were mentored by Prof KN Ganesh, Director of IISER-T, Prof B Jagadeeshwara Rao and Dr Raju Mukherjee. Union Minister for Human Resource Development Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has congratulated the team that one Gold iGEM Jamboree.

iGEM foundation is an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to the advancement of Synthetic Bilogy, Research, Education via an open community based competition process. It was established in 2003. Its main programme was to spur the iGEM competition among undergraduate students all over the world. The iGEM comptetion gives students from about 45 countries registered with iGEM the opportunity to push the boundaries of synthetic biology by tackling everyday issues facing the world.