• Question: Will your research help us for the future?

    Asked by jaszperkins to Emma, James, Jayne, Kara, Sharon on 15 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      Hello and thanks for your question!

      I really hope that my research will help people in the future, that is the main reason for me being a scientist.

      It is hoped that in the future, embryonic stem cells could be used as a source of cells and tissues that could be used for transplants into people who have diseased or damaged organs. At the moment, this is already being done with people who have bone marrow transplants, as the cells in the bone marrow are a type of blood stem cells. However, blood stem cells can only really make blood cells, but embryonic stem cells can make lots of different types of cells, so we think they would be really useful for lots of different types of transplants.

      In my lab, I also 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!

    • Photo: Jayne Charnock

      Jayne Charnock answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Hi Jaszperkins

      I really hope so! Thats what inspires me to do my work. But is suppose my ultimate goal would be to make myself jobless if we finally managed a successful cure for wound healing! I guess id go and work on something else though 🙂

    • Photo: Emma King

      Emma King answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      I certainly hope so! Stem cell research as a whole has a great potential to help people, especially if therapies for things like stroke are shown to work. I like to think that my work in particular will help people be more aware of the limitations and advances in stem cell research and also help keep a regulatory system that means we can get safe therapies but still allow scientists the freedom to do research.

    • Photo: James Chan

      James Chan answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      I really hope so! That’s the reason I’m doing this. I wanted to do something that would translate to the clinical setting, in other words, to make sure the stuff we do in animals and test tubes is relevant in human patients and bring it across to the clinic to help people.

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