Alex Hames Email and Phone Number

PCOL410: 5 credit course for the Spring SemesterI helped lead discussions, grade quizzes and exams, attended office hours, and helped aid professors. I also tutored students outside of class by meeting with them, helping fill in gaps of knowledge, and working through problems, so they could succeed in the course.

Under the umbrella of UBRP, my work in Dr. Rui Xiong's lab was on the protein MLH1 through the lens of Lynch Syndrome and colorectal cancer. MLH1's role is in the repair of DNA and its deficiency can lead to mutations in a person's genome and possibly cancer. By decreasing MLH1's activity in cancer patients with a drug, we hoped to increase the number of DNA fragments so it can help the immune system identify and target cancer cells. We developed possible drugs and tested this hypothesis through various techniques in my lab including CRISPR-Cas 9.

I was a student and ambassador in the UBRP, where I worked in the program for the summer of 2023 and following academic year in Dr. Xiong’s lab.

In Dr. Wang’s Lab, I helped study mice brain tissues in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders research by staining and analyzing brain samples by IHC. I also helped to genotype the mice by amplifying their DNA utilizing PCR.