• Question: what is your perspective on what the future is going to look like due to your research

    Asked by jessicaobiorah to Yvette, Louise, Michaela, Sian, Steve on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by emmamarie, lolliiex.
    • Photo: Yvette Wilson

      Yvette Wilson answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      I’m not sure there’ll be a visible difference, but I hope that everything we are trying now to reduce climate change will start working.

    • Photo: Michaela Livingstone

      Michaela Livingstone answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      In some cancers some proteins are being made that make it worse, whereas in others they are not, a whole different set of proteins are being made – cancers even of the same type can have a different set of proteins being made. SO for example, if you test a tumour and find it has “cancer protein 1” turned on and you know how that protein works and you know how to turn it off, you can target it and hopefully treat that cancer. In the future I think it’ll become more common that everytime someone has a biopsy of a tumour taken and it’s found to be cancerous, that cancers own specific protein profile can be worked out to show exactly how the tumour has come about, what’s went wrong, and how you can fix it. Doing research in to how these proteins work will help us give a prognosis, and target drugs and so forth for treatments.

      There’s been studies in to this sort of thing, and lots of people are working on cancer-associated factors, so really my research will just be adding to portfolio of knowledge on the subject!

      I of course haven’t proven beyond doubt that the proteins I’m working on are involved in cancer, but we’re working on it, and there’s a strong case for it 🙂 I’ve at least got a good idea how they’re working… though still loads of questions to answer still!

    • Photo: Steven Kiddle

      Steven Kiddle answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Not a clue, but hopefully better

    • Photo: Sian Harding

      Sian Harding answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      I see people living with heart failure, rather than dying from it, with the symptoms kept under control until we can make stem cells from their skin and rebuild the muscle of the heart.

    • Photo: Louise Johnson

      Louise Johnson answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      It’s almost impossible to say today which bits of science are going to be useful to us tomorrow. There isn’t an obvious way that my work will change how our lives are in the future, but I hope it will help us to understand living things better. Understanding why genes sometimes co-operate and sometimes don’t might also help us understand diseases, and that might help us prevent or cure them.

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