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Asked by anon-256638 to Sophie, Sandra, Kimberly, Katy, Karen, James_the_Scientist, Elaine on 12 Jun 2020.
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James Beswick answered on 12 Jun 2020:
My research group is trying to learn more about problems caused by too much of a process in our bodies called ‘inflammation’. Some inflammation in our bodies is a very healthy, useful part of our natural defence against infection. But sometimes our bodies can ‘over-react’ and actually cause more problems than the original infection/damage. Imagine if the fire brigade turned up to a birthday party and soaked everything with water because of birthday candles on a cake. An example of where too much inflammation can cause problems is in Alzheimer’s disease.
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Comments
Ellie commented on :
My department is looking at trying to develop molecules to treat a large number of human diseases. The group I work in though is focused on two – Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP) which is a very rare disease where your muscles turn to bone (only 1 in 2 million people are born with it). Also Difuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG) which is a rare childhood brain cancer. However these two very different diseases share a common mutation in a protein called ALK2. It’s really weird because people with FOP don’t get cancer and people with the cancer don’t get bone formation. In FOP there is only this mutation, in DIPG this mutation is joined by several others on other proteins. BUT the fact that they share a mutation means that maybe the same medicine would work on both of these so we’re looking into finding leads for that.
Rachel commented on :
Hi Sasha, My department tries to find vaccines to prevent diseases, rather than medicines to cure them. The types of diseases include tuberculosis, malaria and HIV – these are the ones that kill the most people every year but still don’t have effective vaccines. At the moment, most of our focus is on developing and testing the COVID-19 vaccine.