Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2009. My castaway this week is the scientist Kay Davis, a leading geneticist she has dedicated much of her life to finding a cure for the

severest form of muscular dystrophy and is tantalizingly close to realizing her ultimate

ambition.

Human trials for possible treatment will begin this year. A professor of genetics

at Oxford, her work has also paved the way for therapies for other genetic disorders, like cystic

fibrosis and diabetes. Quite something for a woman who doesn't have an O-level in biology.

Although even as a child she did possess that critical quality

crucial to scientific pioneers.

I loved solving problems, she says. I was very tenacious and I would

sit in my room until I had finished the problem. I am a sticker. Given that you are a sticker and it's a great word and that you do power away at things until you get it right.

I'm imagining of course with the type of work you do, K David is that you're not able to take that work home, that it has meant many long hours

and long days at a lab bench.

It does, I mean it's very satisfying because you do it with a passion but biology is very

unpredictable so some of the experiments you expect to work don't work and

sometimes they work for three weeks and they become the same experiment will stop

working for another three weeks so unless you're tenacious

it can be very frustrating. I felt slightly cautious in the introduction using the

word cure but that is what you're aiming at now for this form of muscular dystrophy. Is it to cure people who

already suffer from the condition?

Well yes it is and of course to to cure those that are born.

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