Question: i think cancer is the most common deciese to whom are unfortunate to get it and is in desperate need to get a cure so .. how far do you think that your studies would go, would it be anough to spread and help diffrent countriies thankss ?

Marianne Baker answered on 17 Jun 2010:

Hey tiffanixx

So, in most areas of science there are different kinds of research.
You have ‘basic’ (though I don’t like this term, it’s not very accurate) primary research, which focuses on the fundamental things. Molecular (things on a tiny scale), atomic, interactions between molecules and cells etc.
This is the sort of base-line understanding of how stuff works.

Then you have applications; maybe technology if we’re talking about physics and chemistry, medicine in biology.

‘Translational’ research is what our institute tends to focus on; that is, ‘basic’ research that we can also link to clinics, in the hospital. So we work with doctors to achieve this. Looking at the safety and efficacy of drugs and trying to work out what would be good plans for new drugs.

That’s where my group comes in – we try to understand blood vessels at the molecular level – how cells stick to each other and move around – to see how safe drugs are, or if we can find better things to target and treat cancer.
My main project is now looking at a particular protein on the surface of cells that line blood vessels because no one’s done this yet and I’ve got some results to suggest it might be important.

This won’t necessarily lead to a new drug being developed, but it contributes to our overall understanding of blood vessel growth in cancer, so that maybe we can understand why some people’s cancer comes back or why certain treatments are working or not.

All the different levels of research are necessary to make sure that what we do is as safe and effective as possible – and people get sick all over the world, science done in one country isn’t inaccessible to people everywhere else. It’s a basic principle – we share our results with the rest of the scientific community because that benefits the most people.