Profile
Alejandro Allo
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About Me:
Hi! I’m Alex. I live in London, where I do my PhD at the Institute of Cancer Research 🔬. Outside the lab I love reading 📚, travelling 🌍 and learning all sorts of new things!
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I’m from a small village in northwestern Spain. When I was 18, I moved to Barcelona to study Genetics. Since then, I’ve lived in the Netherlands, the United States, France, and now London, where I’m working on my PhD in Cancer Biology.
I love traveling and exploring new places with my friends whenever I can. Besides traveling, I enjoy reading, especially stories about history. I also like learning new languages—right now, I’m learning Portuguese!
I have many hobbies. Recently, I’ve started doing art again, something I loved when I was your age. I’m even trying to mix art with my science work!
I can’t wait to share more about me and answer your questions!
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My pronouns are:
he/him
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My Work:
I am a PhD student at The Institute of Cancer Research. My work involves studying how cancer cells evolve to become resistant to treatment.
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Animals and plants can change and evolve over time when their environments change. You may have studied Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Well, it turns out that cancer can do the same thing! This is why sometimes cancer stops responding to treatment and becomes resistant, making it hard for doctors to cure patients. My job is to find out how cancer cells become resistant so we can create better treatments to help more people. I study a rare type of cancer called neuroblastoma, which affects very young children. By understanding more about this cancer, we hope to find new ways to treat it and help kids get better.
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My Typical Day:
I wake up and have a quick breakfast (a coffee and a toast). I then take the bus to get to the lab around 9.30am. Then I plan and do my experiments for that day, analyze data from my previous experiments or read what other scientists in my field have recently published. Around 5.30pm I finish and go home, unless I get caught up in running some experiments!
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Education:
I went to primary school in my home village (Malpica de Bergantiños). When I was 11 we moved to a (slightly) bigger town, so I changed schools to start my secondary studies. Towards the end of this period I started focusing my studies into the Life Sciences path, taking courses in Biology, Chemistry and Physics. At 18, after taking my university entrance exams, I moved to Barcelona to start my Bachelor’s Degree in Genetics. Four years later, I graduated and moved again, this time to the Netherlands, to complete a Master’s Degree in Molecular Mechanisms of Disease. Finally, after working as a researcher for a year, I came to London to start my PhD at the Institute of Cancer Research.
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Qualifications:
The education system in Spain is a bit different from the one here in the UK. To access university I had to take a national exam in most of the subjects I studied in High School. Then my grades in High School and in those exams were added up to give a final grade of around 12.5 out of 14 (I needed around 11.5 to be accepted in the Bachelor’s in Genetics). At the end of my Bachelor’s, my average grade was 8.2/10. During my Master’s it was 8.6/10, and that allowed me go graduate “cum laude” (with honors).
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Work History:
When I was in my third year at uni, I did a summer placement in a lab where we diagnosed cancer patients. I did two longer placements during my Master’s. The first one was in the Netherlands, working on developing genetic therapies for blindness. The second one was in the USA, now focusing on therapies for cancer in children. After I completed my Master’s I stayed one more year working as a researcher in the same American lab until I moved to London for my PhD.
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Current Job:
Currently I’m doing my PhD in Cancer Biology at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. Here I study the mechanisms that allow cancer cells to evolve and resist therapies. I’m currently on my third year of PhD and I will be graduating in a little bit over a year.
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Employer:
The Institute of Cancer Research is a public research institute focused on investigating how cancer works and developing therapies to defeat it. It works in close partnership with The Royal Marsden Hospital and has two sites in London, one in Chelsea and one in Sutton (where I work).
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My Interview
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What did you want to be after you left school?
A historian or a biologist...I know, strange options
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Nope
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
I always joke about quitting and opening a bakery
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Can't choose one, I listen to all sorts of genres
What's your favourite food?
I don't like picking favourites, but it would be some pasta or pizza
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
Travel the whole world, be jobless because we have cured cancer and a dog!
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