Hailey Proud. (Photo: submitted)
A university student specializing in biochemistry has done herself, her family, and her hometown proud.
Twenty-four-year-old Hailey Proud of Belleville has won a Global Undergraduate Award in the Medical Sciences category for a research paper on inflammation mediators found in cells called spheroids involved with a common type of ovarian cancer that most often strikes older women.
The spheroids are found in the liquid which forms as ovarian cancer develops and aids in the cancer’s spread.
The research was done in a London hospital last April when she was in her final undergraduate year at Western University.
She did various experiments on genes making up the spheroid cells and focused on one of them.
“What happened was the cells that form these spheroids grew slower and were smaller in size which is a good sign that this gene is somewhat important for the spheroids to form and that was the big result I found in my project.”
Research is ongoing at Western University and elsewhere on ovarian cancer.
Hailey Proud’s research project was one of over 4,000 submissions from all over the world to Scotland-based Global Undergraduate Awards covering 25 different disciplines. A panel of judges selects the winners in each category.
Normally the prestigious awards are handed out at a large conference each year in November in Dublin however the awards this year will be done virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Proud, who’s now going for a Masters Degree in Montreal, hopes to complete a PHD and eventually become a teacher specializing in biochemistry or genetics.
Her father Gordon owns Proud Auto Repair on Moira Street West and her mother Kelly was a former owner of The Dance Company.
