We can have the bacteria soon already. Winnie has heard from CCL that they have a partner who has experience in shipping globally. BioFoundry confirms for their case.
We need to plan so that we are prepared to receive them. What is the minimum we need?
List:
- Antibiotics
- Glycerol
- Medium (liquid/solid)
–> The above would account to <100€
- Culture flasks
–> This might be more expensive to buy
- Access to -20°C freezer
- Access to -80°C freezer
–> At Open BioLab? Other organisation?
We need to do the lab work in a Level 2 lab, so in Open BioLab in Brussels. If we succeed in culturing the bacteria, this is already a good validation of the previous research from CCL. We can do the same for the new method BioFoundry is doing.
In the next stage things will get more expensive. We need to digest the protein, purify it and validate if it’s insulin.
Rita: we have no purification skills yet
Others: we can ask questions to professors/experts on the topic
Rita: HPLC is the easiest option by far.
Niek: we can try cheaper methods for validating if the protein is the correct insulin. I’ll look up if blotting is possible. Perhaps there an ELISA kit for this? (looks up online: there is an insulin ELISA kit at €500 for 96 tests). We’ll also need a way for showing gfp expression. The CCL protocols will come in handy.
Winnie: is the process a black box from start to end, when we ultimately validate if what we’ve made is insulin? Because if there’s something wrong, we won’t know where it went wrong.
Rita: we could look at the patents, if there’s mention of detection methods. We can use those if it’s just for validation in this stage.
We will ask around for prices/help from our network as we will need to buy materials at some points. This is not always easy in ReaGent’s experience. ReaGent has a supplier that will sell to them, but the supplier doesn’t have everything. Others don’t even answer. We can get some stuff viavia though.
Concluding thoughts: we can easily receive the samples, so we’ll get that done asap. As the next stage is more expensive, we need to plan a crowdfunding or other initiative to look for some money.
We need more detailed information on the protocols of CCL to make better estimates of required materials and costs.