• Question: what have you found out so far?

    Asked by candyangel99 to Ken, Indi, Jarv, John, Vicky on 16 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by 4z4m.
    • Photo: Ken Dutton-Regester

      Ken Dutton-Regester answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      During my PhD I have found a couple of things- I have found a bunch of new genes that when mutated, help cause melanoma (skin cancer)- these are called TFG, MAP3K5 and MAP3K9. I have helped find a bunch more but there are in the process of being published so I can’t talk about them yet. Some of these new mutations in genes are new drug targets! This is exciting as in the next 5 years or so we might see some new drugs being developed to specifcally target these mutaitosn and it might help improve survival for these patients. See my profile for an example of a drug that targets a mutation that causes melanoma.

    • Photo: Vicky Young

      Vicky Young answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      Well I have been doing it for a year now and have established how to do all my experiments and identified some key proteins which are essential to make a scar and that are missing in the ovary. I have also identified some hormones which are able to stop the proteins involved in scarring from working.

      So i think the ovary doesn’t scar because the hormones in the ovary stop the scar-making proteins from working.

      Now the big challenge is to show how this actually happens !

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