And while the teachers were making demands, students were most likely thinking about the Easter break. But, the high schoolers at the Anglican Cathedral College in Belize City got a special sendoff today with a guest speaker address by Aimee Flores. She's the Belizean pursuing a Ph.d in Stem Cell Research and Bio-chemistry at UCLA whose groundbreaking research on a possible cure for baldness has been published in a top US medical Journal.
Today she shared her journey with the ACC students, to try and encourage them to open their minds to the sciences:..
Aimee Flores - Guest Speaker
"I think it's really important for the students to meet people, Belizeans who are out there doing different things whether it's the sciences or anything else just to encourage them to follow up on what they might be interested in seeing that Belizeans can do that."
Reporter
"Is there anything that you have seen that same seed of scientific interest that you had as a young student exist in various students you have meeting?"
Aimee Flores - Guest Speaker
"I do, definitely, after the talk I had a young lady come up to me and she said, Miss I'm really interested in plants and flowers and I'm just wondering what can I do with that? So, for her I told her Botany a really amazing field to go into that's definitely something that if you are interested in you should pursue it. So there are students here that are really interested in the sciences, really interested in stem fields but I feel like some of them just don't know, what can I do in the sciences, everybody thinks that if I'm interested in the sciences I can only be a medical doctor and if they don't want to be a medical doctor, they said well I can't be interested in the sciences any more so I'm here to encourage them to think about the sciences, from a broad area so if you think about it, you have genetics, you have pathology, you have botany, you have marine biology, you have what I do, cancer biology, stem cell biology. So, it's getting them to realize that there is so many options out there for them. I told them, just having the interest is the step 1, because having that interest in learning more about any stem field is the beginning for them to go out and find out more about it."
We also asked Flores about her ongoing research into a stem cell solution for baldness, and a form of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma:
Aimee Flores - Guest Speaker
"Since the last time we have officially published it and a couple patents has been filed and so we are currently doing safety and toxicology studies on the compound and trying to make sure that it's not going to have side effects or anything. Hopefully within the next couple months we plan to partner with a pharmaceutical company to further the manufacturing and development, clinical trials and so forth of the drug. In the meantime, I have directed the focus of my research to skin cancel and cancer biology so I'm about publish another paper where we were describing ways to inhibit the progression on skin cancer. So, right now that paper is in review."
Flores is visiting with family and returns to UCLA after the Easter break.
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