Three Minute Thesis Winner 2024

welcome everybody to my presentation let me start by asking you one simple question do you remember the pandemic H yeah yeah yeah well in the interest of time let me skip straight to the answer and the answer is yes of course we all remember how toughy was but we have one great weapon in our disposal against covid and that were the MRNA vaccines you've been proba hearing this world many many time mRNA it is an incredible technology but unfortunately It suffers from one major flow this vaccines always need to be kept in the cold always

in a freezer always in a fridge and this is a massive issue in the developing World millions of doses have been estimated to be wasted chucked out in the beans like leftover left on your table in the morning and imagine how many lives could have been saved if we had a better version of this vaccine this is what what I want to change and my solution may come from the nice little protein that you see at the center of my screen that one ladies and gentlemen is known as an encaps and if you're wondering what

it is well simply put an encapsulin is just a box a container something that you can open up put stuff on the inside and that stuff stays there protected and the reason why I also put a volcano in my slide despite some of the puzzle looks that I see around is because that gives a very good indication of where you find the proteins in the most dangerous places on Earth and also how tough they are for all ints and purposes and ENC capsuling this type of box is n indestructible it's very very hard to break

them apart so you probably see where this is going what if we were to combine the MRNA with its incredible potential as a vaccine which puted it inside such a strong container something that could act as a safe to protect this medicine something that would allow us to create a new generation of vaccines that can be shipped all over the world and provide protection to everybody regardless of the conditions this is and I'm not even joking why what my entire PhD is all about in my first year I focus on making as many as this

boxes as I could like in a factory bam buam buam in my second and third year I instead focus on trying to physically put this mRNA inside this box and to make sure that it works I'm happy to announce here with you that we have a working prototype of this a working prototype of this vaccine that now we can move to the final stage the stage of test asking questions like is this going to be a tough vaccine a vaccine that can survive all sorts of condition is this a vaccine that can be shipped all

over the world for everybody is this vaccine going to be useful is it going to be provide protection for the people that need it these are all big questions and I know it's time is on the important matter here but I'm pretty sure that the answer is going to be yes thank you for your time [Applause]