Francis is new to the project and arrived a little earlier to give his input. He can help us with mass spectrometry and other analysis methods to determine if we’re working with insulin. He does have some technical questions about purity and the kind of buffer of the samples.
This is partially answered by the fact that we will start from the bacteria, so we do the extraction of the molecules and hence control the buffer and purity.
Francis thinks the legal aspect will play a big role. In his biotech job, patent blocking is a very common thing. He thinks some of the methods mentioned in the documents are already not available without having to pay for licenses. We should clear this out at some point.
- How much research did CCL do on this?
- Do they have an expert looking into it?
- Massimiliano will contact experts in Belgium to hear their opinion.
A discussion on the communication aspect of the project: the main takeaway is that it has to be for a specific goal. It seems like now, we can get by with almost no budget. We can get a lot of stuff via-via, if all options go through. There’s no point in doing eg. a crowdfunding for very low amounts. We don’t have a real call to action yet, so we risk wasting opportunities. We’re still “talking about things we’re about to do but are still a little uncertain”, rather than “things we’ve done/are doing”. The story misses some power for now and we need to clear stuff out.
When we need serious budget, and have a concrete call to action, we should plan things carefully to time them right, tell the right story. Arne points out the importance of having a website, an email address and perhaps a legal structure when there is more money involved. This in order to look more legit and to not burden other organizations with the administrative aspect.
Angela and Massimiliano think that talking about the history of insulin and diabetes, with fascinating stories, will work well for the educational aspect.
Timeline & actions
We drafted a rough timeline in ideal conditions:
- 12 May: received bacterial samples, start culturing
- 31 May: successful culturing, start extraction of compounds & plan analysis
- 31 August: finished analysis runs & made follow-up plans
We’ll try to minimize delays by leaning on the practical experience CCL already collected, to avoid failures in lab work.
Winnie will find out protocols/shipping
@arnepauwels will figure out if OBL will be available when the samples arrive and in the summer
@Rita will collect the consumables when we know more about the protocols
Next time we meet on April 26th, 8pm @ ReaGent!