Choking Cancer – a synthetic biological machine that seeks out cancer cells and inhibits angiogenesis

Forty percent of Canadians are expected to develop cancer in their life time of that forty percent twenty five percent are expected to die from their cancer. Imagine what could be accomplished if all of those people were focusing their attention in their futures instead of the now? This question is exactly what motivated the Central Memorials IGEM team to create a bacterium that could target and kill cancer cells. We decided to combine the developing cancer treatment option of anti angiogenesis with synthetic biology to create a biological machine that would cut off the blood supply feeding cancer cells, effectively starving them. This method of killing cancer cells inspired us to title our project “Choking Cancer”.