‘Self-manufacturing pill’ wins students international prizes

?Self-manufacturing pill? wins students international prizes. Imperial College London students win a clutch of prizes at the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) Gold medal Imperial student team celebrate success at International Genetically Engineered Machines competition - By Danielle Reeves - Friday 6 November 2009 A project to develop a self-manufacturing pill which can produce a drug inside itself and then automatically encapsulate the drug into a neutral delivery system won a team of Imperial College London students a clutch of prizes at the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition at MIT this week. The team comprised eight students from the Departments of Bioengineering and Life Sciences. The team won two major prizes in the competition: for the second year running Imperial College won the prize for the best manufacturing project; the prize for the best consideration of ethical issues in relation to device design; and a gold medal. There were 120 competing teams from top universities worldwide in this year's competition - the Imperial team came fourth overall. The iGEM competition is an international celebration of students' achievements in synthetic biology, an emerging field in which engineers work with molecular bioscientists to produce biologically-based engineering parts, by modifying bacterial DNA. The Imperial student team worked for four months to design and create 'The Encapsulator' - a self-manufacturing pill that began life as a simple bacterial cell.