Science News

Biotech Triumph

On 29 August, we were fortunate enough to participate in the BIOTech Futures Symposium. BIOTech Futures is an annual competition which sees high school students from across Australia and New Zealand engineer solutions to address current problems in healthcare and the environment using biotechnology.

From around the end of June we started our project “3D bioprinted placenta for developing new generational treatments for high risk pregnancies.” After meeting with our allocated mentor Lana McClements who is a Senior Lecturer at UTS, we decided to focus on pre-eclampsia, a potentially fatal pregnancy complication caused by maldevelopment of the placenta. After 3 weeks of in-depth research, we developed a bioprinted placenta-on-a-chip which emulated the environment and layers of the placental barrier in a small chip-like device. This chip would allow for the successful testing of treatments without clinical testing or animal testing, which can be unethical and unsafe. We submitted a poster and video on the 31 July, and received great news on 22 August we were one of the 25 finalists!

On 29 August, we presented our solution live to a panel of judges and other BIOTech participants. On the day we heard from University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor and President Mark Scott AO, The Hon. Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology and Minister for Skills and Training Alister Henskens, and Professor Hala Zreiqat as well as the fascinating presentations by other students. The presentations ranged from restoring touch with optogenetics and bioluminescence to moisture gloves to reduce the symptoms of psoriasis.

This was such a wonderful and educational experience, and we really enjoyed the challenge. Being able to participate really changed our thoughts on what we could do after school in the biotechnology sector and inspired us to pursue careers as women in STEM. We would like to thank Mr Hanson for giving us this unique opportunity, Ms Sharma for enduring all of our questions, and Ms Budden for accompanying us on the day.

Teagan Barrack, Rebecca Colwell, Sophia Chu, Janet Zheng
Year 10