• Question: What inspired you to find a cure for cancer?

    Asked by ainelynch to Naomi on 14 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by fionabreen, tkhan.
    • Photo: Naomi Elster

      Naomi Elster answered on 14 Nov 2012:

      I’ve always been interested in medicine. I was often sick and in hospital as a child, which I guess led to me wanting to make sick people better. I thought about doing medicine for a long time but feel more at home in research.

      I loved my degree in pharmacology but when I was in third year there were two things that really interested me. One was cancer and the other was antibiotic resistance – how bacteria could change to resist the drugs that used to be able to kill them. Then I found out about a project I could do involving cancer cells becoming resistant, and jumped.

      Everyone in Ireland has lost someone they love to cancer and I’m not an exception to that. It’s a disease that causes a lot of suffering and a lot of fear, and I really do want that to change.

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