Kavli Oxford Researcher Hafez El Sayyed Leads Oxford Team in iGEM Competition
Kavli Oxford Researcher Hafez El Sayyed Leads Oxford Team in iGEM Competition
KavliOxford is delighted to announce that Dr Hafez El Sayyed served as the Primary Investigator (PI) for the University of Oxford’s team in the 2024 International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition. iGEM, a leading global event in synthetic biology, attracts over 350 teams from 46 countries, challenging participants to address some of the world’s most critical issues.
Back row, left to right: Dmitry Lukyanov, Hafez El Sayyed, Aritra Saha, Devon Darley. Front row, left to right: Eunice Ho, Julia Tondera. Not depicted, Vedat Habib Papo
The Oxford team achieved outstanding success, earning a Gold Medal and a nomination for the Best Infectious Diseases Project – the only undergraduate team to receive this honour. Their project, OneRing, focused on combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a pressing global health crisis that could result in 10 million deaths annually by 2050, according to the WHO.
The OneRing project proposed a novel antimicrobial strategy using plasmids delivered via conjugative systems to target and eliminate specific pathogenic bacteria. By combining broad-range plasmid delivery with CRISPR-Cas12a for strain-specific genome editing, the team demonstrated the potential for a highly customisable and effective solution against resistant pathogens. Key outcomes included successful elimination of multiple bacterial strains and resensitisation of resistant strains to antibiotics.
Looking ahead, the team plans to optimise the system for microbiome environments and explore applications in livestock, where antibiotic use is a major concern. They aim to develop probiotic-style delivery systems and create customisable plasmid pipelines to target pathogens specific to regions, farms, or individual animals.
The team of six undergraduates – Aritra Saha, Devon Darley, Dmitry Lukyanov, Eunice Ho, Julia Tondera, and Vedat Habib Papo – credits their success to collaborative problem-solving and the support of their mentors and sponsors.
Dr Hafez El Sayyed’s guidance was instrumental in achieving these milestones, along with support from the INEOS Oxford Institute, the Kapanidis Lab, ThermoFisher Scientific, and other valued contributors.
Learn more about the Oxford iGEM team’s work on their project website and the iGEM competition here.
