• Question: how many different cures for diseases have you worked on and completed?

    Asked by to Amy, Anita, Daryl on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Amy Monaghan

      Amy Monaghan answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Hey Gabecpr2706

      So as an undergraduate I used some drugs that are currently in clinical trials for diabetes, and researchers also think these might be useful in preventing damage after a heart attack. They block an enzyme called 11beta-HSD type 1 which makes active steroids in the body. By reducing steroids they reduce inflammation and help vessels to re-grow.

      At the moment I’m screening thousands of chemicals with the hope of finding cures for prostate cancer, but also breast and ovarian cancer (caused by different hormones) and other diseases where inflammation is a problem, such as heart attacks. I’m also looking at a disease called Kennedy’s disease where neurons die because the androgen receptor (the same protein affected in prostate cancer) is mutated.

      It’s possible that drugs I find may be used in lots of other diseases, but we won’t know for a while yet. These cures won’t be completed until they have gone through clinical trials – maybe ten or fifteen years from now!

    • Photo: Anita Thomas

      Anita Thomas answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      That’s a really hard question to answer, for two related reasons.
      One is that – the funding situation being what it is – we often have to ‘leave the field’ ie stop work in the area we are working in and move to another area. We tend to lose track of what is going on in the previous field(s). It could very well be that something we worked on previously is the newest and most wonderful thing in that field since sliced bread – but we don’t know about it.

      The second reason is that with research, our questions – our cures – don’t stop. We find a cure/answer a question, and it leads us onto the next question, or finding a better cure. The cures/questions are all different but all related. It’s hard to quantify that sort of thing. And don’t get me started on ‘cures’ that are dead ends! They’re ‘completed’ all right!

    • Photo: Daryl Jones

      Daryl Jones answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      Hi gabecpr2706!

      Well I worked on some drugs called ICSM35 that now have a new name and are going to go into clinic trials soon. My old boss helped develop those and so I got to work on them too. They will treat mad cow disease.

      I also worked on another mad cow disease drug that we showed stops mice from getting the diseases. So we are hoping they will also go into clinical trials!

      Iv also worked on some Parkinson’s diseases drugs and we think they are going to go into clinical trials too! Quite exciting!!!

      🙂

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