UNAIR NEWS – Students of Universitas Airlangga have made their alma mater proud by winning third place in the scientific essay competition at Medjonson (Medical Djogja Scientific Competition) held by the Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta.
This year, Medjonson’s theme was “Psychiatric Disorder: Spread Mental Health Awareness to Achieve Healthy Mind around the Society” with four competition categories: educational videos, public posters, literature reviews – scientific posters, and scientific essays.
“Rahmi Nugraningrum and I represented UNAIR in the Medjonson 2021 scientific essay competition,” said Ilham Rahmanto, one of the team members.
Ilham also said that many UNAIR delegates participated in the competition because the theme of psychiatric disorders or mental health was interesting. In this competition, Ilham and his team wrote a scientific essay entitled “The Potential of CRISPR-Cas9 Genetic Engineering in Reducing APP and APOE4 Gene Abnormalities towards Indonesian Elderly Free of Alzheimer’s Dementia.”
“Here, my team and I designed a new treatment method for Alzheimer’s dementia, or what we know as senile disease, by using a genetic engineering approach. We developed this drug so that it can be a new therapy with lifelong benefits,” said Ilham.
Their research is based on the current phenomenon where Indonesia’s life expectancy is getting better. However, on the other hand, it will create a population explosion one day, especially for the elderly. Furthermore, one of the diseases that often affect the elderly is dementia. Therefore, this is the biggest challenge for health workers in the future to cure diseases related to geriatrics.
“The current dementia treatment uses drugs to relieve only the symptoms of senile but does not cure the direct causes, which are APP and APOE4 gene abnormalities. As a result, patients have to take the drug for life,” he continued.
In preparing for the competition, Ilham and his team took approximately one month since the beginning of February. The lengthy preparation was to get the best potential ideas to be applied in the future.
“During the preparation, we often have discussions until we decided on a topic that seemed quite heavy because genetic engineering is not taught in lectures. As a result, we had to study CRISPR-Cas9, the latest gene-editing technology, independently,” explained Ilham.
“Our impression when participating in the competition was that we felt our ideas were very different from other participants. Other participants tended to discuss depression, stress, and other mental illnesses with various approaches such as with herbs,” he said.
However, Ilham and the team were very confident that their idea was no less great and has proven to win 3rd place among participants from various universities in Indonesia. Even though they got signal interferences when recording a zoom meeting presentation, they still managed to win 3rd place in the competition
Ilham and the team were a little disappointed when they only won 3rd place because their target was 1st place. They wanted to make a good reputation for their alma mater in the national arena. However, they are still grateful and will try again in the next competition to get better achievements.
“We hope that the drug we designed can be applied in the future, so people with dementia do not have to consume drugs for the rest of their lives. We really hope that all the elderly in Indonesia can be free from dementia,” said Ilham. (*)
Authors: Pandit Bagus Tri Saputra dan Melissa Valentina Ariyanto
