One of the silver medals of the World Synthetic Biology Competition “iGEM Competition 2024” was won by the student interdisciplinary team of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki “iGEM Thessaloniki”. At this year’s event, 438 research teams from more than 50 countries took part, competing for one of the competition’s medals.

It is worth noting that the team has won awards in each of its participation in the World Competition, as it won the gold medal in 2017, the silver medal in 2018, the gold medal in 2019, and the silver medal in 2022 and 2023.

The team participated in the competition with the research project “NeuroMuSceteer”. NeuroMuSceteer, utilising Synthetic Biology techniques, offers an innovative and – until now – unexplored therapeutic solution for Multiple Sclerosis. The aim is to provide a basis for the development of a new generation of therapies targeting the multifactorial nature of the disease and in the future to make it available not only to the scientific community but also to patients.

This year’s team consists of 11 students from four faculties and seven departments of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The members of the team are, from the Department of Medicine, Alexandros Liatsos, Panagiotis Boutos and Elias Piliannidis, from the Department of Agriculture, Maria-Christina Tsilia and Maria-Louisa Takatzoglou, from the Department of Chemistry, Anastasia Trygouti and Vasilios-Panagiotis Theocharopoulos, Ioanna Karabela from the Department of Chemical Engineering, Maria Kefala from the Department of Pharmacy, Antonios Tsiorvas from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Eva Haseikidou, a graduate of the Department of Biology. Dr. Konstantina Psatha and Dr. Stefania Maniatsis from the Department of Medicine are the instructors of the team.

The scientific leader of the group is, for the fourth year, the Associate Professor of the Department of Medicine of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Coordinator of the interdisciplinary group Functional Protein Analysis and Systems Biology (FunPATh, KEDEK Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Michael Aivaliotis.