Year 13s compete in Medicine School Teams Prize 2025
The annual competition hosted by Imperial College London takes place across two stages: creating an idea and communicating it via an A0 poster, and a selective round where the top 10 teams in each category present the idea to a panel of judges in a 10 minute section. Our team competed within the Lung category, where we focussed on emphysema and its most common cause being smoking, repurposing the existing drug CoQ10 due to its presence throughout the human body proving its safety as well as its notable properties as an antioxidant being applicable to stopping the oxidative damage from smoking. As well as this, we also applied elements of existing delivery techniques to optimise the release of CoQ10 within the lungs, recognising the potency of a targeted delivery. This was to be administered via the use of a soft mist inhaler to maximise access to deeper lung tissue.
Creating the poster involved difficult decisions on whether to prioritise information or to lighten the space and add illustrative diagrams, and while it admittedly ended up quite dense the designing of Shyam and the artbook level illustrations of Harshaa brought the idea into focus effectively, bringing us to the presentation round. In preparation for the presentation, we all decided to dig deeper into our idea, including the complex delivery mechanism and by what mechanisms exactly would the CoQ10 act to reduce damage. Our presentation consisted mainly of the efficacy of the idea as well as its possible place within treatment, talking about the important details and what we found most interesting. Much of our idea predicates on principles we learnt of during the GCSE and A Level syllabus, while our additional research applied and stretched our knowledge to its maximum. We had 2 practice auditions to hone our presentation skills.
Again, our presentation ended up being quite dense with detailed explanations and speculation. Overall however, the presentation ran smoothly. This was aided by Henry’s quick judgement; when we were nearly going off time at the end, he smoothly ended the presentation with the key points to prevent us from entering into the red. The questions given by the panel - while challenging - were partly prepared, and we answered them confidently.
Overall, while not winning the school any money, we felt we performed quite effectively. Talking to members of our team after the presentation, we remarked the perfect timing of the competition, as in our academic career this is the first time we had enough baseline knowledge to come up with and communicate such a complex idea. Each new piece of information specific to the idea (either of emphysema itself, CoQ10, or of the delivery mechanism) being just challenging enough to be rewarding but also accessible to us with our current level of knowledge.
Thanks to everyone that listened to our presentation, as well as Dr Hubbard for his support and feedback throughout the competition!
Article written by Shyam, Henry, Boyan, Arya and Harshaa (all Year 13)