-
Asked by naqvint01 to Richard, Prateek, Liz, Jim, Amelia on 13 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by watsonka04.
-
Amelia Markey answered on 12 Jun 2011:
No not really. My work is more about diagnosis. It just involves making a clever device that can produce DNA which other scientists can use to test for genetic diseases etc. But you never know with science. A lot of things get discovered by accident. So maybe something I make could also be used to help cure diseases?
-
-
Jim Caryl answered on 12 Jun 2011:
Yes, some of the work I’m involved with in the development of new antibiotic medicines that can be used to treat several very common bacterial infections that can be life-threatening to people who are already very ill, such as those having treatment for cancer. We are trying to take already-existing antibiotics and change them slightly so they work better, as well as searching for completely new antibiotics.
-
Richard Badge answered on 12 Jun 2011:
The human jumping genes that I research do very, very occasionally cause diseases – they can jump into genes and break them, but this rare…
Having said this one of the most exciting discoveries in my field at the moment is that the active human jumping genes are much more common than we used to think.So they may have more of a role in human disease than we previously suspected…
That being said, the type of research that I do is really about finding out how these jumping genes work, and how they have managed to remain active for millions of years, despite theoretical work that says they should have died out… that’s a facsinating question to me!
Richard
-
Lizzard O'Day answered on 13 Jun 2011:
that’s my dream. Right now I’m working on breast cancer. As a community of scientists we are making progress. One day we will rid the world of this disease and I’ll do whatever it takes to help. At the present moment (literally- I’m recording data as I type this) I’m figuring out what metabolites or food products a breast cancer cell needs to survive- turns out what a breast cancer cell “eats” and what a normal healthy cell does are different- I’m working towards exploiting that difference and in some ways hoping to starve the cancer cell. Fingers crossed!
-
Prateek Buch answered on 13 Jun 2011:
Indeed – my work directly relates to treatments for diseases that cause blindness in early life. I usually don’t use the word cure for most of my work, as we’re still trying to find ways to prevent the loss of vision getting worse over time that curing it outright – but the aim is to understand why a patient loses their sight, treat them by delivering genes to their light-sensitive cells, and help them see better – which I suppose if it works really well is a cure!
Comments