The City of London School iGEM team, working closely with CLSG, has achieved remarkable success at the 2025 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in Paris- the world’s largest synthetic biology event. Competing as the UK’s only high school team, they earned a gold medal, making them the only European high school team to do so.
Their project, Project CryptoKnight, tackles cryptosporidiosis – a parasitic diarrhoeal disease that infects 7.5 million people each year and causes around 200,000 child deaths. Despite the availability of an affordable treatment, diagnosis remains a major challenge in many parts of the world due to unreliable and costly detection methods.
The team developed a novel point-of-care test that is inexpensive (around $4 per test), highly sensitive (98.7%), and requires no electricity or special training. Using a process called Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP), their test changes colour from pink to blue when infection is detected. They also engineered four new open-source enzymes and created the world’s first mathematical model of LAMP, which has attracted attention from researchers at New England Biolabs.
With just 2.5 days of lab time and a budget of £170 (compared to some teams who had 12 weeks lab time and six figure budgets), the team’s achievements rivalled those of university-backed competitors with vastly greater resources.
The City of London iGEM team’s innovation, perseverance, and impact have set a new benchmark for high school science worldwide.
