Students impress Aldevron during SPARQ Competition
The SPARQ (Synthesizing Proposals for Ambitious Research Questions) competition is a program that charges students to think about potential solutions to challenging scientific research questions. Participating students must delve into primary literature to understand the scope of the question, then devise a hypothesis and means to address the question. Students were required to submit a brief written proposal and present their proposal at the Student Academic Conference. The Fargo-based biotech company Aldevron assessed the proposals and attended the Student Academic Conference to listen to student presentations.
We are excited congratulate the winning team composed of Guzoro Adumah, Hannah Norton, and Opeyemi Olowoniyi.
Director of research and development at Aldevron, Nate Russart, said that their proposal was well thought out and possessed realistic experiments to be conducted to test their hypothesis. He also said that the team from Aldevron that visited MSUM appreciated how detailed and thoughtful all the student proposals and presentations were.
The question these students and several other teams addressed was: Adeno-Associated Viruses (AAVs) are often used in the treatment of genetic diseases due to their ability to deliver genetic material in cells. Challenges to AAV therapies include a limited packaging capacity, pre-existing immunity to AAV capsids, targeting of specific tissues, high dosage requirements, and production of empty capsids or reverse-packaging. Choose one or two challenges and identify the causes behind some of them, identify strategies to mitigate these challenges, and propose future work to further overcome these hurdles.
We look forward to partnering with Aldevron next year for another SPARQ question. Questions will be announced in September during the fall semester.