The Impact on Society And/or the Environment of one Scientific Discovery Made by an Australian Scientist in the Past 30 Years.

Year 10 Research Task Stage 3                Name: K.S

Complete your essay and bibliography. To assist you in writing the essay, use the guidelines provided below. You may delete the writing in red once you have finished your work.

Write your essay below that answers the following topic question:

Evaluate the impact on society and/or the environment of ONE scientific discovery made by an Australian scientist in the past 30 years.

Impacts on society and environment of New Treatment For Blood Cancer

        In the past 30 years, scientists tried very hard to find out new treatments for blood cancer, otherwise known as leukemia: scientists have discovered CSF (colony Stimulating Factors) that tell stem cells when to grow and create white blood cells and also a gene called BCL-2 that promotes survival or death of a cell. In the early 2010s, Dr. Kylie Mason who was working as a clinician and scientist, was pioneering new treatments for blood cancers, some of which were already being clinically trailed in Melbourne at 2012. Generally, blood cancer treatment falls into two categories: targeting the immune system or targeting the cancer. Both treatments include constant treating and chemotherapy, which can easily destroy the weak body of young patients and leave side effects such as nausea vomiting, conviction, and brain tumor even the patient will be successfully cured. However, the new treatment invented by Dr. Kylie Mason is to use pro-survival proteins (for example: CSF, Mcl-1, Bcl-2) to promote the cells who “forgot to die” to die. This new treatment is much more specific toward  the cancer cells and less target to the other cells, it also has only one small side-effect: it kills platelets in the blood but it doesn’t affect platelets production in the stem cells in our bone marrow. This means that the patients will require a few transfusions of platelets, and it would be extremely dangerous if the patient get trauma during the treatment.

Her research focused on topics such as “Dependence of Hematological malignancy on pro-survival proteins”, “Evaluating the efficiency and tolerability of targeting pro-survival Mcl-1 in vivo”, “Promoting cell death to improve treatment of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia”, “Apoptosis in hematopoiesis, leukemogenesis and therapy”, and “Mechanism of Bcl-2 pro-survival function”. The research took place at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Australia.

        The research done by Dr. Kylie Mason is significant because it is a huge development and improvement on treating blood cancers, and the techniques can also be used in other cancer treatments. First, this more effective treatment has larger rate of patient to survive from leukemia than the old treatments, which can save many lives in the society every year. Second, only one slight short-term side-effect is much better than a combination of long-term side-effective leaved by chemotherapy, this decreases or even vanish the impacts on the rest of the patient’s life. At last, the pro-survival proteins used in the treatment can also be use in treatment of other cancers such as the “king of cancer”- lung cancer. Even though this still needs more research and clinical trials, the research done by Dr. Kylie Mason will strongly support them.

        Dr. Kylie Mason was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when she was fifteen, she lucky survived but some of her friends who also had leukemia didn’t. This experience inspired her to move on and make a difference in the field of treating blood cancer herself. She got Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, The University of Melbourne in 1996, and PhD (Medical biology), The University of Melbourne/Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in 2007. She is a present fellow of Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, fellow of Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and present Victorian Cancer Agency Clinician Fellow, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. She also earned many rewards such as “Young Tall Poppy Science Award, Victorian State Government”, one of the “Melbourne’s Top 100 Most Influential People”, and “Albert Baikie Memorial Medal”. Her leukaemia patient, Haematolo says that “Kylie’s personal journey battling cancer over many years has not only fuelled her passion for medicine and research, but provides her with an almost unique perspective”.[pic 1][pic 2]