• Question: How do you think your study's will effect the quality of peoples lifes? how would you further improve your results if they prove to be positive?

    Asked by pkchristian to Emma, James, Jayne, Kara, Sharon on 17 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Hello,
      Yes, the work I do should improve the quality of peoles lives in several ways, firstly, in studying the very early embryos, we are now anble to help people who have trouble getting pregnant to do so, which is a really nice part of my job. We look at the genes inside the embryos and try to work out what goes wrong sometimes.

      Then I make stem cells which in the future could be used in lots of treatments. Currently, they are being used in treatment of leukaemia, diabetes, some neurological (brain) diseases and in cartilage and bone treatments. They have also been used to treat rare conditions like fanconi anaemia. Scientists have also used stem cells to rebuild a windpipe which is really amazing! In the future, they have the potential to help most cancers, parkinsons disease, liver disease, heart disease, grow new skin and bones and restore sight. There are probably a lot more that I have not covered, but they are pretty amazing cells!

      As well as this, I use stem cells from the breast in lots of different experiments to try and understand why sometime breast cancer spreads around the body. I then try and make this process stop using different drugs and treatments and it is hoped that in the future, these things could be used on patients. It takes a lot of experiments and time for this to happen, which is why we need lots of scientists working on stem cells and cancer!

      So I hope that my work will help people, thats the reason I do it!

    • Photo: Jayne Charnock

      Jayne Charnock answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Hi pkchristian

      Your question is really at the heart of my research 🙂

      At present I am working towards curing wounds that dont heal in people with diabetes- 15% of all diabetics will suffer chronic non-healing wounds at some point in their life, and for many this leads to amputation, which is obviously severely dibilitating and can destroy a persons life. You only have to google ‘diabetic wounds’ to see how dreadful they are.

      I also used to work on placental development and how it is essential to a baby’s development. Even today many thousands of babies are born each year which are very sick from not developing properly and we aim to find ways to help their growth

    • Photo: James Chan

      James Chan answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Hi there, my study looks at how to speed up the healing of broken bones. Fractures are a really important problem because literally thousands of people around the world get that everyday, and many of these guys don’t heal properly. these include old people who have fragile bone (called osteoporosis) and young people who have been run over by cars or soldiers who have been hit by bombs. when the bones don’t heal properly, the limb becomes pretty useless and may need to be cut off and the poor guy may never be able to walk or work again.

      Now if we are able to speed up and improve this healing process, then we can help all these people and they can then work and have much better quality of life. We have been quite fortunate because we have sussed out how we can do this in mice, so the next step is to try this on humans. We are also looking to see if there are other drugs or chemicals that can do this as well. To find out more about how our drug works, check out this link! http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12578388/stem%20cells%20and%20broken%20bones.pptx

      Hope you like it!

    • Photo: Emma King

      Emma King answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Hi, i’m not sure my work will directly affect people but I hope it might go some way towards allowing us to have safe, effective therapies in the UK. And I always try to warn people of the dangers of going abroad for untested therapies – so maybe I’ve saved a few lives that way!

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