Re: "Brick by brick"1, the iGEM competition is a fantastic idea, and I often hear comments from other scientists saying that they wish there were similar student competitions in other fields of science. The Slovenian team has been singled out not for its achievements but for the alleged hype associated with its project, which I think is not really a fair assessment. The goal of our project was to prepare a synthetic vaccine against Helicobacter pylori based on several innovative approaches. Within a couple of months, students managed to demonstrate the proof-of-principle for the vaccine. From the proof-of-principle to the working vaccine is a long way, but the potential is there. We are continuing the project and are discussing further development with pharmaceutical companies.
Roman Jerala, Slovenian iGEM team leader
National Institute of Chemistry
Ljubljana, Slovenia
roman.jerala@ki.si
Steve Wiley suggests that graduate students benefit first from cold-hard facts, not ...
