A group of students of the Technology Institute of Costa Rica (TEC) won the silver medal in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) event, organized by MIT and that took place in Boston, MA, USA, October 27th to the 31st in the category Diagnostics.

The Costa Ricans participated with their project Prostal, a system for the diagnosis of prostate cancer through the development of bacteria that can detect the presence of cancer cells in urine samples.

Sofia Vieto, Samantha García, Paula Thiel, Pablo Vargas, Rafael Montenegro, Juliana Artavia, Kevin Castro and Timothy Bustillos, five of them students of Biotechnology Engineering, one of Computer Engineering, another of Mecatronics Engineering and a last one of Industrial Design Engineering had the opportunity to present their work in the world’s biggest competition of Synthetic Biology.

“The biggest hope of survival is the early detection of the illness, which is why an efficient, fast and low cost detection mechanism is vital and urgent”, commented Sofía Vieto, member of iGEM TEC Costa Rica.

This was the only project presented by Costa Rica and Central America, among 300 teams from some of the most important and recognized universities worldwide.

“This victory is important because it generates a series of positive changes for the Costa Rican Technology Institute (TEC). These students that recently participated in Boston are now sharing with their classmates and motivating them to obtain similar achievements in the future”, said engineer David García, coordinator of the group.

Prostate cancer is the second most common type of cancer among men in Costa Rica, causing close to 373 deaths in the country every year; globally approximately 300 thousand men die from this illness.

The fact that currently the most efficient method of diagnosis is the digital rectal examination causes a lot of men to refuse examination and therefore many cases go undetected; since Prostal is a non-invasive system for the detection of prostate cancer the goal is to increase the number of men that get checked on a regular basis and increase the number of survivors of this form of cancer through early detection.