Vancouver, British Columbia – BC Biotech presented $10,000 to the winning teams of the sanofi-aventis Biotech Challenge at its annual BC Biotech Biotechnology Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, April 18, 2007. This biotech competition for high school students is one of 13 held nationally and is coordinated by BC Biotech in Vancouver. Each cash prize is split equally between the team members and their respective schools to go towards their science program. This year’s competition was held at the BCIT, Burnaby Campus on Friday, April 13, 2007.
Christina Chiu from Hugh Boyd Secondary School was awarded first place for her project Engineering Gut Cells to Produce Insulin to Treat Diabetes. Christine designed an experiment that examined the ability of using a genetic engineering approach to coax gut cells to produce insulin in a sugar-dependent manner, while also regulatable by a drug.
As the first place winner, Christina and her school will share $3000 and she will compete with the first place student teams from each of the regional sites across Canada in the fifteenth annual National sanofi-aventis Biotech Challenge competition in a two-way, real time videoconference competition on May 10, 2007.
Second place went to Sir Winston Churchill Secondary’s Thomas Sun and Robyn Thom for their project Diblock Copolymers and Epoxidized Carthamus Tinctorious Oil as Novel Polyvinyl Chloride Plasticizers and Third Place was awarded to Xue Chen (Janny) and Karen Yu also of Sir Winston Churchill Secondary for Fiber-Reinforced Cellulose Acetate Composite.
Judges Dr. Paul Barran of NRC-IRAP, Dr. Carl Perez of Chromos Molecular Systems Inc. and Dr. Keith Turner of BCIT praised the teams for the quality of their projects and President of LifeSciences BC, Karimah Es Sabar added, “This gives students a great experience and provided them with the opportunity to connect with mentors in BC’s biotechnology industry.”
LifeSciences BC would like to thank the following supporters who have generously supported this year’s sanofi-aventis Biotechnology Challenge in British Columbia.
National Supporters
sanofi pasteur
sanofi-aventis
Human Resources Social Development Canada
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
VWR International
Genome Canada
National Research Council of Canada
Canadian Louis Pasteur Foundation
Canada Foundation for Innovation
BioTalent Canada
Regional Supporters
LifeSciences British Columbia
British Columbia Institute of Technology
NRC / IRAPFor more information, contact:
Melissa Beaton
Marketing Specialist
LifeSciences BC
tel: 604-602-5227
email: mbeaton@lifesciencesbc.ca
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