Aimee Flores, a Belizean native, is making the nation proud with her groundbreaking research into stem cells. Flores currently resides in the United States where she is a biochemistry researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
At UCLA, Flores is finishing a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology and is currently conducting a research on how to treat a specific form of skin cancer. She has taken the lead of a group of UCLA researchers who are attempting to find a new way to activate the stem cells in the hair follicle to promote growth and is working to develop a compound that will do just that.
According to Flores, the research has officially been published in Nature Cell Biology and several patents have been filed and the group is currently working on further studies. Safety and toxicology studies are being done on the compound to ensure that there are no side effects.
Flores hopes that in the next few months, they will be able to partner with a pharmaceutical company to get into manufacturing and executing clinical trials. She also divulged some what she is doing now doing, “In the meantime, I have directed the focus of my research on skin cancer and cancer biology. So, I am about to publish where we were describing ways to inhibit the progression of skin cancer and so right now that paper is in peer review. So, that is sort of what I have been up to for the last few weeks.”
