AEGLE
Aegle in Greek mythology was one of the daughters of Asclepius by Lampetia, the daughter of the Sun. Her name has derived from "Brightness," or "Splendor," either from the beauty of the human body when in good health, or from the honor paid to the medical profession.

Osteoarthritis Risk Calculator

NOUS team created a new OA risk calculator that uses medical evidence from recent high evidence level medical publications. AEGLE, as we have called our tool, takes as input information from the user, and outputs a bar graph that shows the risk factor of the user of developing knee osteoarthritis. The NOUS OA Risk Calculator is expandable and can include new risk evidence when this is published.

The tool is based on the CARRE health risk ontology and expands the CARRE health risk database (CARRE is an EU FP7 ICT project, Contract No. 611140, https://www.carre-project.eu/").

Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common musculoskeletal condition worldwide and it is a degenerative disorder of the synovial joints. At the moment, there is no known therapy that effectively stops the deterioration or reverses the existing structural defects. Eventually, degenerative processes lead to the irreversible destruction of the cartilage tissue.


With our project, we aim to halt the progression of Osteoarthritis, help the recreation of the damaged cartilage and relieve the pain, caused by this condition.


We have chosen a combination of specific signalling molecules, that will be produced by genetically modified cells. Once our modified cells get activated under specific circumstances, they will secrete these signalling molecules guiding nearby cells to excrete the building blocks of the joint and proliferate while stopping the inflammation.


This experiment may offer a non-invasive treatment method, in which cells are derived from the patient, modified with the proposed method, and then introduced back in the joint, leading to the treatment of the condition and granting a pain free lifestyle.

About

The iGEM NOUS team was founded in 2019 by undergraduate students from all over Greece under the auspices of Democritus University of Thrace aiming at participating in the iGEM 2021 competition, an annual, world-wide synthetic biology event.


Our vision as a team is to provide innovative solutions to everyday problems through synthetic biology while inspiring others by our efforts. On our first participation in the competition, we aim to do that by tackling the problem of Osteoarthritis.




Sponsors