Overview

In our world, billions of people are suffering from contagion. However, only a fraction of contagion can be prevented by the existing vaccines. The disadvantages of traditional vaccines, which are bothered to produced and purified and should be kept and transported under low temperature, limit their usage especially in developing countries.

Fig1. hard shipping in some area

This year, our project focused on a revolutionary vaccine delivery. We chose Bacillus subtilis as chassis to establish a band-aid secreting fresh transdermal vaccine consisting of four engineering B.subtilis, each of which carried a gene circuit independently.

Fig2. block-based design

With an excellent transdermal peptide TD1, three of the engineering B.subtilis could express a series of fusion proteins (the antigen and 2 kinds of adjuvants) which could penetrate the skin and work as traditional vaccine molecules. The fourth bacteria are our “reporter” which would notify users when the band-aid is working well and the patch can be pasted or tore off. Moreover, we designed a reliable suicide system in Bacillus subtilis for the very first time in iGEM. So it would be OK when the patches are thrown away into the environment. Cheap and convenient, we created a world without needle.