Philippa Roxby
Appearances
Global News Podcast
First deaths as wildfires wreak havoc in LA
This was one of the largest studies to date looking at diet and the links with bowel cancer. And there was half a million women in the UK were analysed over 16 years along with their diet, what they ate. Now, this was a big observational study rather than a trial. So what they had to do was try and work out which aspects of their diet might have influenced whether they got bowel cancer or not. So
Global News Podcast
First deaths as wildfires wreak havoc in LA
There's a little bit of guesswork involved. But when they number crunched it, they came out with this interesting finding that it was the calcium in food that potentially was helping to lower the risk of bowel cancer. We know that dairy products are a beneficial thing when it comes to cancer.
Global News Podcast
First deaths as wildfires wreak havoc in LA
But what this study found that it was probably not necessarily the dairy products, but it was the calcium in food. So not just in dairy, but in non-dairy, because you find calcium in all sorts of things. that could be slightly reducing that risk.
Global News Podcast
First deaths as wildfires wreak havoc in LA
Calcium, as it goes through the colon and goes through the bowel, binds with some of the acids from food, and that stops them damaging the lining of the bowel. So that's the main theory at the moment.
Global News Podcast
US senators question Robert F Kennedy Jr at heated confirmation hearing
Still to come... These are small patches that are developed into heart tissues. Stem cells are very special cells which can take on the form of any other cells in the human body.
Global News Podcast
US senators question Robert F Kennedy Jr at heated confirmation hearing
These are small patches that are developed into heart tissues. Stem cells are very special cells which can take on the form of any other cells in the human body. So they created these in the lab, little tiny patches of heart muscle, and used them on primates that had heart failure. And that's something that's very common in people.
Global News Podcast
US senators question Robert F Kennedy Jr at heated confirmation hearing
After they've had a heart attack, their heart doesn't work quite as well as it did and heart failure develops. And so these heart patches can be sewn onto the damaged heart and the researchers found that actually they could help, they could strengthen the heart muscle and help support its pumping and its beating and go some way to repairing it.
Global News Podcast
US senators question Robert F Kennedy Jr at heated confirmation hearing
Interestingly, they're just off-the-shelf stem cells which have already been developed and in the lab because it takes some time to do that. So if you use the patient's own stem cells, that would take too long. So they're sort of off-the-shelf. They've already been developed and engineered into different parts of tissue from the human body.
Global News Podcast
US senators question Robert F Kennedy Jr at heated confirmation hearing
So they take a tiny sample of those and then create them into this pink sort of coloured patch which they then stitch together. onto the heart.
Global News Podcast
US senators question Robert F Kennedy Jr at heated confirmation hearing
Yes, it is very early days. We're only just with this team of German scientists into a small study in people. So clearly much larger studies are needed in more people to find out exactly what these patches can do. At the moment, they think they've got the potential to help repair the heart. And charities, heart charities today were saying, well, if all these other steps in the future are positive,
Global News Podcast
US senators question Robert F Kennedy Jr at heated confirmation hearing
treatments for heart failure. At the moment, there are very few options. People can have pumps put into their body, but those are sometimes costly and complicated and problematic. Heart transplants are hardly ever an option. They're only an option for a tiny number of people. So really, there's a real need for a different kind of treatment, but it could take some time to arrive for most people.
Global News Podcast
US senators question Robert F Kennedy Jr at heated confirmation hearing
We're definitely talking years, years and years. Research is never quick in this area because it's painstaking. But this is a promising start to something that could go on for some time.