• Question: Why will what your doing help our world?

    Asked by anon-213841 to Robert, Imad, Fern, Christian, carolwallace on 19 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Carol Wallace

      Carol Wallace answered on 19 Jun 2019:

      Hopefully at the end of the day, the group I work with might find some new drugs that can treat fungal infections to fight off the multi-drug resistant strains.

    • Photo: Fern Johnson

      Fern Johnson answered on 19 Jun 2019:

      On a day to day basis, the work I do helps people get diagnosed for genetic diseases. Even if there isn’t a treatment yet for the disease, having a diagnosis can be a relief for people, and they might be able to take part in clinical trails for upcoming treatments that might help them. They can also be aware if there is a risk of passing the disease onto their children- they can decide whether they want to undergo IVF to help make sure their children don’t get the disease. The other side of genetic testing is looking for mutations in cancer, to help figure out what treatments will kill it. This has quite a small impact in terms of the world, but makes a huge difference to patients and their families.

      In the long term, I hope my work will lead to more personalised medicine – looking in a person’s genes when they get ill, and giving them a treatment that we know that will work. That will certainly change the NHS and healthcare as we know it.

    • Photo: Robert Ives

      Robert Ives answered on 19 Jun 2019:

      Good question. Hopefully, by helping to develop new medicine, people will live healthier and happier lives. I spend much of my time working on medicines for children and hopefully my work helps these children to have more opportunities in life.

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