Charlie Aguilar Lavilla, Jr., a DOST-Newton Agham scholar, is currently finishing his PhD in Biomedical Science at the Nottingham Trent University (NTU), where he hopes to find for a novel approach for Diabetes treatment.
The Iligan native has been conducting his groundwork under the supervision of Dr Mark Turner at the School of Science and Technology, NTU since April 2016. With his research titled ‘Carnosine in muscle: biological actions and therapeutic implications’ he continues to investigate on the biological role of carnosine, its potential beneficial action in diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, and its derivatisation for use as a potential therapeutic tool.
Statistics show that Type 2 Diabetes is predicted to more than double in the next ten years or so, which could affect 7.8 million of the Philippine population. Charlie hopes to offer novel strategies to help prevent the onset of diabetes, or to significantly slow its development and the dawning of debilitating complications. Bearing the economic and social development in mind, he believes that this strategy could benefit Filipinos on low protein diet, and ultimately lower the prohibitive costs for Diabetes treatment. This cutting-edge biomedical study was published by the Nature Research Journal last October 2017.
Prior to receiving his DOST-Newton Agham scholarship, Charlie served as Assistant Professor at the Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) for six years. Now in the final stages of his PhD, Charlie is scheduled to return to his home institute in Iligan City in 2019, and continue strengthen its research capacities, one of which is by sustaining direct collaborations with NTU and other relevant agencies on drug discovery pipeline for Diabetes.
Find more about Charlie Lavilla, Jr. by watching this brief video.