Dr Arlene Williams-Persad wants people to know it does not matter where they start in life or what setbacks they may have to overcome, with hard work they can achieve their goals.

She attended St Joseph’s Girls' RC School, Curepe Junior Secondary, and St Augustine Senior Comprehensive before attending UWI. She is now a pharmacologist and a lecturer in pharmacology at the university's Faculty of Medical Sciences, St Augustine campus.

She is also the treasurer of the West Indian Immunology Society (WIIS), a 5K runner, and one of nine women awarded the prize of Distinguish Woman in Immunology at the Latin American and Caribbean Association for Immunology’s 13th Latin American and Caribbean Congress of Immunology (ALACI 2022) in Cuba.

“I’m very proud of my pathway. I want more flowers to blossom through the government school system.”

Williams-Persad, 46, represented UWI and WIIS at ALACI2022, which took place from June 6-10 at the Meliá Internacional, Varadero, Cuba.

Held every three years, the congress brings together researchers in Latin America and, more recently, the English-speaking Caribbean in the discipline of immunology and related sciences, and encourages younger people to get involved in research.

There she presented on the topic of the Treatment and Management of Chronic Granulomatous Disease (CGD) – a rare inherited disorder. It was the first time TT was represented at the conference and the first English-speaking Caribbean country to be represented.

She said she presented at the last WIIS symposium in April and through that symposium, was invited to present at ALACI2022.

The WIIS was formed in February 2021 and its members were students and academic staff at UWI and clinical staff at various regional health authorities.

Williams-Persad said one in 250,000 people are born with CGD annually in the US and Italy, while the statistic was one in 20,000 in developing countries.

[caption id="attachment_964233" align="alignnone" width="683"] Dr Arlene Williams-Persad with her award as a recipient of the prize of Distinguish Woman in Immunology at the Latin American and Caribbean Association for Immunology’s 13th Latin American and Caribbean Congress of Immunology (ALACI 2022) in Cuba. - ANGELO MARCELLE[/caption]

She said there is a high risk of people dying of CGD if they have tuberculosis as they were highly susceptible to viral infections because of a mutation in the NADPH oxidase (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase) enzyme, one of the proteins in immune cells.

She and her colleagues would like to look closer at the defect in the NADPH oxidase enzyme.

“In addition to improving the quality of treatment – there is a new stem cell technique to help improve and reverse the protein – we want to look at this NADPH oxidase closer in our lab and maybe see if, in other inflammatory diseases or neurodegenerative disorders like alzheimer's and parkinson's, this defect might be useful, or if there may be a drug to suppress that NADPH oxidase to alter that function and help those