Projects for Final Year Biotech Students
Biotech is an exciting and rapidly growing field, encompassing biomolecular, biomechanical and bioimaging disciplines. For your final project, you should pick a discipline that truly fits your interests, and, if possible, challenge yourself to work outside of your comfort zone, in order to learn the most. Be sure to observe safety precautions at all times, work with a mentor who can make sure that you are on the right track, and keep track of your entire project in a lab notebook, so that you can replicate your experiments if necessary.
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Biomolecular Projects
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A hot topic in biomolecular engineering involves work with nanoparticles as drug delivery vehicles. Nanoparticles are nano- and micron-sized particles, consisting generally of a biodegradable polymer such as PLGA (poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) that encases a drug. The focus, in bioengineering, is on using nanoparticles to deliver chemotherapeutic agents and target them specifically to cancerous cells. However, nanoparticles can provide other benefits, such as prolonging the amount of time required for a drug to be fully released into the body, and thus, encapsulating a variety of drugs into nanoparticles may be useful. With the mentorship of a professor who specializes in nanoparticles, choose a drug to encapsulate and experiment with encapsulating it in a variety of FDA-approved biodegradable polymers, such as PLGA and cellulose.
Bioimaging Projects
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Another increasingly hot topic in biotech involves combining drug delivery vehicles with imaging the body, through MRI. Through nanotechnology, you can actually encapsulate drugs, along with contrast agents such as iron oxide, into nanoparticles. Thus, when the nanoparticles are injected into the body, we can track their travel through the body. In addition, if they are treating a cancerous tumor, we can track the shrinkage of the tumor and visualize the nanoparticles in cancerous cells. For your final year project, consider addressing the combination of a drug of interest with a contrast agent, in nanoparticles.
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Biomechanical Artery Design
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Patients with heart disease often need transplants, but there is a shortage of transplants to go around. Thus, engineering artificial arteries is crucial. It is imperative to design arteries with the appropriate mechanical and biological properties --- in other words, arteries that can withstand the pressure that natural arteries withstand when blood is pumped through them, and arteries on which a variety of cells, such as endothelial and smooth muscle cells, can grow. Consult with your mentor to design an artery that approximates the conditions that we need as much as possible.
Biotech Modeling
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One of the keys to making advancements in biotech involves making models of different parts of the body. For instance, scientists have figured out how to create gel models of the brain, which, when injected with a dye, act similarly to the brain in terms of dye distribution. Experimenting with injecting these models with different amounts and speeds of dye is certainly useful, as it will give us a sense of the most appropriate ways to inject the brain with a drug, depending on the effects that we are hoping to obtain. Work with your mentor to develop a project that models a current problem in biotech, and attempts to find a solution.
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