Question: What made you interested in regenerating cells?

Sam Godfrey answered on 20 Nov 2012:

Hi Laura

I guess I was always impressed by how good our body is at mending itself, whether it’s from damage by a virus or a broken leg. I found it fascinating that there are all these cells that all have specific jobs that fit perfectly with each other and talk to each other in order to coordinate the whole thing. But even though this system is cool, it’s not perfect. Some injuries we just can’t recover as well from, like brain injuries or spine injuries, and you see these people who are paralysed or mentally disabled for the the rest of their lives. So I got interested in why cells in the brain and spine aren’t as good at growing back and fixing themselves, and whether there is anything that we can do that can help the cells act like the rest of our cells and fix the damage.

In our case, we have found a small protein that the brain cells have, which acts like a hook and stops the cells moving to repair themselves, so we are trying to find a way to interfere with this hook. Hopefully that will help the brain cells regenerate.