On September 29 in Kiev took place the regional stage of international contest of the innovative Falling Walls Kyiv 2016. The project was based in honor of the 20 anniversary of fall of the Berlin wall and is supported by the German government. The right to represent Ukraine at such a tender has Klitschko's Fund.
This year 76 applications were submitted for the Ukrainian stage of tender, 20 of which selected for the presentation. The student of FBT (department of industrial biotechnology) Marina Korshevnyuk became the winner. Now she will represent Ukraine at the final stage which will take place in Berlin.
The student prepared the "Edible Vaccines" project created based on Institute of cellular biology and genetic engineering under the leadership of A. A. Peterson. A project task is application of methods of genetic and cellular engineering of plants for development pharmaceutical and biotechnological sciences for the purpose of creation of new vaccines and methods of vaccinotherapy, in particular "edible vaccines".
As Marina told, she worked more than a year over the technologies of creation edible vaccines ("edible vaccines"). People consume enough vegetables and vegetable food, in particular salads. Therefore researchers aimed to create plants in case of which use the human body becomes steady against infectious diseases are specially transformed - it is vaccinated. In other words, the speech can be about passive immunization when the plant becomes capable to synthesize antibodies of various groups or an interferona which with food get into a human body and help with treatment and prevention of diseases, or active immunization: the plant synthesizes safe proteins - analogs of particles of pathogenic viruses or bacteria which in case of the use "include" immunity of the person and it becomes protected from these pathogens.
The student expects acquaintance to adherents who are interested in the same researches from a trip to Berlin and develop similar directions in biotechnology and pharmaceutics. It would be interesting to it to carry out (or to join) a new project. The girl is sure: in Ukraine there are a lot of talented people capable to create new researches, but a lot of time is spent on searches of sponsors therefore she would like the goverment to be more interested in such activities. Development of modern treatment-and-prophylactic means and methods, in particular vaccines, is urgent both in the world, and for Ukraine.