The latest episode in our Telling Our Stories: In Conversation series took place recently.
Returning speaker Professor Roxana Carare from Medicine was joined on the sofa by Professor Neil Bressloff from Engineering, where they discussed their research and highlighted the areas in which their respective fields overlapped and the benefits of interdisciplinarity.
While discussing what would make the ideal research team, Roxana explains how computational modelling could provide the key to “closing the circle” and providing guidance on how an experiment could move forward most effectively.
Building upon this, Roxana discusses the limitations of experiments at a cellular level in relation to Alzheimer’s disease, and the benefit of working with Neil to instead approach this by first working to understand the mechanism of the disease, and subsequently gaining a better understanding at an organ and even societal level.
Neil comments on having read about a new development in medicine which would help to remove the sticky plaques which are linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
Roxana explores this point, going on to explain that, ideally, the sticky plaques need to be prevented from forming in the first place. She states that discovering what drives efficient clearance of blood vessels within the brain, and potentially being able to act upon this understanding therapeutically, could benefit those with strong family histories of Alzheimer’s disease and prevent individuals from developing it in the future.
The full episode will be promoted on SUSSED shortly, so watch this space.
