Question: have you had a break through with your work

Kylie Belchamber answered on 13 Jun 2016:

I’ve made some cool discoveries!

I normally look at white blood cells (macrophages) that eat bacteria. But macrophages can eat other things as well, like dead cells and dust that you breathe in. We know that macrophages can eat mould (like the little spores you get from mould growing on old bread), so wanted to see what happens when we feed mould to cells from the diseased patients.

When we did this, the cells from the diseased patients ate much less then the healthy ones! This is really cool, as it might explain why the diseased patients get a lot more infections in their lungs than healthy people.

I love studying this, as noone else in the world is doing it at the moment, so it means I get to be the first to study it and find out why they can’t eat as much. And hopefully find a cure!