iGEM Technion 2022 team Photo credit: Technion spokesperson’s office
A team from the Technion – Israel’s Institute of Technology – is working on proving the feasibility of lab production of Decursin, a hair loss deterrent, and its possible incorporation into preparations including shampoo, cream, and more.
This is not just a breakthrough for people suffering from generic baldness, or alopecia, but also from hair loss caused by medical treatments like chemotherapy for cancer patients.
The Technion’s synthetic biology team is engineering special bacteria that will produce an industrial substance that deters hair loss, and which can be added to regular shampoos and other haircare products. It found that Decursin is a major component of Angelica gigas Nakai (AGN) root extract. It has many beneficial properties including the ability to suppress inflammation, repress cancer, and prevent apoptosis – or programmed cell death, which includes hair cells. The molecule is produced from a rare seasonal flower grown in Korea in an expensive and inefficient process. The student team is engineering bacteria that will produce Decursin industrially.
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The team is competing this year in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition, which will be held in Paris from October 26 to 28.
This year, the iGEM team from the Technion includes 12 students from across the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, and the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. The team recently received a special Impact grant given to only a small number of the teams participating in the global competition based on their projected benefits to humanity.
The prestigious iGEM competition was founded in 2004 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to give students, mainly undergraduates, a chance to experience scientific and applied research in the world of synthetic biology. Since its inception, the competition has been held in Boston. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was held online for the past two years. Now, it will be held for the first time in Europe at the fair center Paris Expo-Porte de Versailles.
This year, more than 300 teams from around the world will participate in the competition, including three Israeli teams – one from the Technion, one from Tel Aviv University, and one from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The first Israeli iGEM team was established at the Technion in 2012 under the guidance of Professor Roee Amit, a faculty member in the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering. He guides the Technion team to this day.
