• Question: Do you feel as though you can make a significant change to science?

    Asked by u11brownd to Derek, Elaine, Heather, Keith on 27 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Heather Eyre

      Heather Eyre answered on 27 Jun 2013:


      I know my work is early on in the search for potential new medicines but yes.

      If my work shows that there is potential for treating a kidney failure using medicines working on Urotensin II (a hormone found in the kidney, heart and brain) then that could lead to steps forward later. If it doesn’t have an effect I’ve added to the knowledge about Urotensin II, and possibly narrowed down the number of potential targets for treating kidney failure.

    • Photo: Keith Siew

      Keith Siew answered on 27 Jun 2013:


      Well I’d like to think so! The expressions “standing on the shoulders of giants” and “take small steps for big gains” spring to mind…

      Often in science those big breakthroughs are a product of lots of other scientists putting pieces of the puzzle together until someone comes along with the final piece and puts it altogether… So not to say people don’t work hard, are really clever and make those breakthroughs themselves… but it can be a luck of the draw being there at the right time and place… standing on the shoulders of those before you pushing you over the hill!

      But my specific area of research has only come to the fore in the last decade so its pretty new and lots still to be discovered… so if I’m lucky and our hypotheses are right we could be on to some really exciting stuff expanding our knowledge of how the kidneys work and opening up many new avenues for treatments of rare genetic diseases and blood pressure.

Comments