Many can say that one's love for their family serves as a huge factor in their own pursuit of success in many fields. Indeed, this is a fact for 16-year-old Filipino student Maria Isabel Layson of Iloilo National High School, the winner of DepEd’s 2019 National Science and Technology Fair in “Best Individual research in Life Science”. While most students at her age are expected to excel in athletics or in exams, instead she has shown excellence in the field of medical research. Despite her age, she was able to independently conduct a research on Jamaican cherry, which is a common fruit that grows abundantly in her native country, the Philippines. Truly family drives the passion of attaining one's goals as Layson states that it was the multiple loss of her family members to the disease that pushed her to finish her study.
In her study, she has successfully proven that this unsuspecting fruit known as Jamaican cherry can cure type 2 diabetes through its bioactive compounds. So far, most biological plants that have been found as an effective regulator for the disease only has one or two components, either the root or the leaves, that has been proven to cure diabetes. However, Layson found that not only the leaves and roots of the Jamaican cherry can cure diabetes but also its fruit.
Thereby, Layson was deemed applaudable for taking notice of this fruit as the center of a study when nobody else thought so as she states that “nobody pays attention to it” not knowing its groundbreaking potential. Now, through her independent research driven by her love for her family, many lives affected by one of the leading causes of death in not only her country but of the world, can now be saved.
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