I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Disease Zone. It has scientists studying the causes and processes of illness . Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
The drug we’re using in our lab can already be bought at the pharmacy ($1000 for a box of 24 pills….).
The drug was developed by this pharmaceutical company called Novartis. They made the drug for people who have too much iron in their blood, which is really bad for your organs. So people who get blood transfusions get too much extra iron in their body from the transfusion and need these pills to get rid of the extra iron.
We used the pills to increase the level of a particular protein in the mouse and found by accident that it also prevented them from getting fat.
So what is great about this, is that the drug is already made, it has been shown to be safe to use in adults and children as young as 2 years old. What we don’t know, is if this drug works in overweight people as it works in our mice.
With a bit of luck we will test this by the end of the year!
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