• Question: What are your projects and why ?.

    Asked by aliishaaleiighfarrley to Claire, Greg, Jane, Jo, Nuruz, Vicki on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by chippi97, faiithhlouiisedevenporrt, jordanboi, laycader, jmasters07.
    • Photo: Vicki Onions

      Vicki Onions answered on 13 Jun 2010:

      Hi,
      My research at the moment is looking at trying to freeze a whole ovary and get it to a stage where it could be transplanted back and work normally. Sometimes if girls and young women go though medical treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy (for cancer treatments for example), this can damage the eggs which grow in the ovary and so the woman will go through the menopause early and will become infertile. The theory behind my research is that if you take out either pieces of ovarian tissue (where the eggs are stored and grow) or the whole ovary before this treatment begins and freeze it away, it could then be thawed and regrafted back in after treatment and hopefully function normally so the girl/woman would get periods again and would be able to have children. This has been successful in women using small pieces of ovarian tissue as these pieces are easy to freeze and some women have even had children following this procesdure. However, they are only able to have children for a relatively short time as the eggs inside the small pieces of tissue run out quickly. So my research is looking at freezing the whole ovary so that more of the supply of eggs are preserved and this should enable these women to have normal ovarian function for longer.

    • Photo: Claire O'Donnell

      Claire O'Donnell answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Just now I’m working on haemophilia, the best way to organise operations on blood vessels tomake sure as many people survive as possible, I’m finishing off teh IVF stuff ready to hand it over to someone else. I’ve got to do some research on a new gizmo for treating nerve pain. Doens’t sound much does it but honestly I’m working hard and not waisting the taxpayers money. 🙂

    • Photo: Greg FitzHarris

      Greg FitzHarris answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi there alisha.
      Have a look at the profile thing for more description (and some pretty pictures)…
      Essentially my lab is interested in eggs. In humans, as women get older, their eggs become less and less good. This is the reason that women find it harder to get pregnant as they get older (as they get into their forties, say). Its also the reason that older women are more likely to have miscarriage.
      We know roughly what goes wrong in the egg – but not ‘exactly’. We do experiments on eggs to try to find out precicely what the problem is — if we were to find out why eggs go bad, then, maybe eventually we could fix the problem… or at least use this information to pick out the bad ones (cos you cant tell which are the good ones just by looking at them).
      I hope that makes some sense — feel free to ask more….

    • Photo: Jo Broadbent

      Jo Broadbent answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi Alisha

      Most of my projects are about long term health conditions like heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease. My job is to help people living with these diseases for many years be as healthy as they can be, despite the disease.

      A big part of my job is making sure fewer people have to go into hospital because they have heart attacks, or strokes or other emergencies. Lots of people have heart disease and other health problems but don’t know it. I try and make sure that we find as many of those people and give them the best treatments that we can, to stop them having heart attacks at a young age (and here “young” means under 75!!).

      This means not only that fewer people die younger, but also that fewer people have to live with disabilities caused by strokes etc.

      Jo

    • Photo: Jane Cleal

      Jane Cleal answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Hi Alisha,
      I work on the human placenta, this is the red round thing that attaches the baby to the mums womb and feeds the baby by the umbilical cord. I look at how the mums food gets to the baby by the placenta. This way I can work out how to make sure the baby gets enough food and does not grow bady and get ill. This is really important as lots of babies are born really small and get ill or die.
      J x

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