• Question: I have heard of scientists that have nearly found cures for things such as TB, can their research help what your doing with cancer now?

    Asked by riannarascal to Gioia, Iain, Jo, Leo, Mariam on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joanna Watson

      Joanna Watson answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Yes, definitely!!! It’s really important that scientists across lots of different types of science and lots of different diseases all share what they have learnt with each other.

      In the type of research I do it is mostly new ways of doing statistics and analysis that are shared. Some of the big studies that epidemiologists do, like the Million Women Study that my boss set up, can be used to research all kinds of different diseases – we try not to ever waste any information that could be useful.

      The other scientists in the zone might know more about how research into other diseases like TB can help with research about cancer genetics or cancer treatments too.

    • Photo: Mariam Orme

      Mariam Orme answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      TB (tuberculosis) can be treated with antibiotics, because it’s caused by a bacterium. They’re really nasty antibiotics that are quite bad for your liver, and you have to take them for a long time, but it’s certainly treatable. Unfortunately that doesn’t directly help with my cancer research!

      But all scientific research can help other scientists… the more we learn and understand about the biology of diseases the better, and you never know when a piece of information from another field might turn out to be important for your own work.

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