The first thought I had wnen I arrived to Cancer Research Insitute here in Cambridge was ' why the hell I am not working in cancer pharmacology??. The insitute was deffinatelly 21 century type of building, very modern, you could actually see how much money is being invested in this type of research. This is not without the reason as there are around 298,000 new cases of cancer diagnosed each year in the UK, and more than 1 in 3 people will develop some form of cancer during their lifetime. The funding for the cardiovascular research is not that great as it is approximatelly 10x lower, and it comes mainly from a charitable BHF body. This makes me a bit jelous, as more funding means better quality of research. I am not talking here about the personal benefits. Funding is essenitial to provide the reserach of the highest standards, to ensure that the highest technology is being applied, that the human error is reduced to a minnium. Anyway, coming back to the conference, its main aim was to accumulate the people from various biomedical disciplines in one place. And they were not ordianry people, they were beutifull minds that decided to come over for this conference organised by students for students to come closer various disciplines. Biomedical sciences have many dimensions and the current trend is to combine clinical and basic bench research- from bench to bedside althoghether with epidimiological, political and economical studies. I have heard this term for the first time while attending a lecture in Endocrine Pharmacology teached by Prof Johnatan Seckl, a head of QMRI in Edinburgh. Here, we where honoured to listen to the lectures by Sir Tim Hunt, Prof Jospeh Penninger, Prof Rebecca Fitzgerald, Prof Helen Rees, Prof Anne Willis and Prof Geraint Ress, each of whom are working in a diffrent dyscyplines of biomedical science.
The greatest impression definatelly made on me Sir Tim Hunt. He is definatelly of an excentric personallity. You can just say it by looking at him. His overall apperence was very messy. The shirt was jutting out of his trousers, his hear were completly disordered and his nose hair are probaly visible from the moon. But as the the beuty is not only skin deep his modesty and sense of humour and something else that you can't really desribe in one word definitally makes him 'a befutifull mind'. He has disocvered cyclins, a molecules responsible for the controll of cell divison. And becuase of this disovery he was awarded with Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2001 althogether with three other people. He was talking about his time in Cambridge and he was honest about how hard he worked in his undergaduate degree. He was living above the Eagle bar, one of the most famous one in Cambridge. Anyway, there are saying that his discovery was of the greatest importance since disovery of the DNA structure by Watson and Crick. It has also important therapuetic implications, as for e.g cancer is realted to unregulated cell divison as cell doesn't know when and how to stop to divide. Understanding how the cell divinde allowed for a further steps to develop the theraphies towards treating this condition.
The second speaker that have made great impression on me was Prof Joseph Penninger. He made the list of the 10 most cited scientist within last two years. In addition , he was made one of the 10 most intresting people in America. Therfore, I was quite lucky to sit in a front row with a Brad Pitt of Science Hollywoood. His presnentation skillls and the way he is presenting to the public was amaizing. I don't know if I ever can do it or it is a matter of practice. He showed like from studying one of the proteins, which was implicated in calcium metabolism like the dysfunction of the protein leads to development of the breast cancer, osteoprosis and the other conditions.
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