This is the second part, featuring Question Time, Part 1 having been published a short time ago.
Question Time
Q. “We’re talking about Michael J. Fox of ‘Back to the Future’?
A. Yes, we are! He was 29 when he got Parkinson’s. By that time he had starred in several very popular movies. He first noticed a stiffness in his right hand, then a bit of a tremor. He knew something was wrong, but to carry on with his career needed people to believe he was 100%. He was around 39 years old when he had full-blown Parkinsonism. He then set up his Foundation dedicated to finding a cure, and has given a lot of money toward research in that area.
Q. How do you get involved in the summer research programmes?
A. Prof. Reynolds noted that he himself was unable to take on any more students at present due to other commitments. Also, many other staff have interesting research projects, so drop them an e-mail asking to talk about that possibility. About now is a good time to start looking. Noting he was ‘a bit rusty’ on the details, John said that there are scholarships available, but also commented that the difficult financial situation of the University may have an impact there.
Q. Are there opportunities to do research in Pharmaceutical Science?
A. Prof. Reynolds has contacts with staff running this course, specifically Shakila Rizwan and Greg Walker. “I think it’s a very good course . . . and good people . . . If you do reasonably well in your papers all the way through, you can qualify for a degree and honours, [if] there’s someone who can supervise you for a project, then you can do an honours research project.” If Hons. is not achieved in that way, there are still ways to get into research, and Prof. Reynolds informed us that there are two PhD students in his own group who did Pharmaceutical Science degrees. He suggested that, with a certain amount of volatility around such newly established courses, it would be wise to e-mail them with an enquiry.
Q. Why did you choose to go into teaching and research as opposed to practising medicine?
A. “There are days when I have asked that of myself! . . . I love teaching . . . I love seeing lights go on.” He told us he was currently teaching the third year Medical class and it's probably the hardest content they have to cover this third year . . . "The lectures, you've got to keep on top. When you get to the lab, you put it all together and the lights will come on. And they do, always, for about 70% of the class. The other 30%, for whatever reason, don't get there. 'It's just too hard’, (which I don’t agree with), or they haven't prepared themselves quite the same way as others."
"The research side is really interesting. I have people in my lab when we were doing a recording, they would text me in the middle of the night and would have seen something that no one in the world had seen. And it's true!"
"Very esoteric [things] - ‘I've just applied the dopamine cell frequency of 100 Hz and I've mistaken that for 2 seconds and boy, I got LTP.' Sometimes they text me. Family sometimes say, ‘Why are they texting you about that? And I say, ‘because it's so exciting!’ So research is really exciting. Teaching is really wonderful. We're now moving towards something that will go into humans, so I'm bringing that side of it back.”
Q: Whangarei - An Unlucky Break, or a Lucky One?
(In question to the bad experiences Prof. Reynolds had in Whangarei Hospital - his first Medical posting):
He has only one photo of those times, showing him helping the nurses to make up beds on an unusually quiet day. “Probably the one day that was quiet, and I helped the nurses make some beds - and made some friends”. This was in his first year after qualifying, Dr. Reynolds was working in a then seriously understaffed 400-bed hospital at Whangarei, the only medically qualified person on duty at times.
“The specialists say to you, 'Look, we're 20 minutes away, it's no problem.' But 20 minutes is a lifetime . . . I remember being halfway down the corridor on call one evening after about a week or so of being there, getting an arrest page to go to the coronary care unit because a woman in her 60s had a cardiac arrest and they needed me there.” As he started running to give her treatment, he had another page from the Emergency Department that a 17 year old was bleeding out.
“And I stood there having to decide where to go. And it shouldn't happen.” He made the decision to treat the 17 year old, knowing that the staff in the coronary care unit were very experienced and competent.” Added to this was the fact that immediate treatment for the 17 year old could save his life, but he would be doomed by any delay. He had to balance that against a woman in her 60’s with cardiac disease - it is an impossible situation for an inexperienced doctor to be in.
"We had wonderful support from nurses and other colleagues, but we were just understaffed.” [As stated earlier, the situation there is far better now].
Q. John then asked a question of his own: ”So what do you think about that First Year Health Science course you're doing? Is it a nightmare or is it okay?”
A. “It’s OK."
John then went on to stress the need for a break of a couple of hours periodically “things like playing instruments or going to a sport or going for walks.” There was general agreement that this sort of thing was happening. John then commented that, before his team (when he was First Year Health Science Director) had made their changes to the course, the cohort prior to that tended to give up all those things because they didn’t have the time. He also noted that the Public Health paper now had some Humanities in it, due to the work of his team. “It’s a good thing to try and do things outside of the busy area you're in, reading books thinking about something else.”
Q. What made you choose neuroscience specifically out of all the specialties you could have done?
A. “A lecturer, whose teaching I liked when I was studying second year med. - Brian Hyland, who is now retired. He taught in quite a different way by building up pictures of the steps occurring in important mechanisms like the action potential, which made the topic much more interesting. “I also used to tinker with electronics at home, and when I enquired, he said, 'We can build that up into a summer studentship', and I actually ended up developing some things for his research, mostly software . . . and he became my PhD supervisor later and quite a close friend. And that stuck in my mind . . . It’s often finding who you can relate to.”
Q. Was it a love of teaching that drew you into staying in academia rather than going into industry. I’ve heard that in industry you don’t have to fight for grants but you don’t have as much autonomy over your research.
A. It was more by default. “I was in the environment, had a Ph.D. and did post-doctoral work here, and they like medically qualified people to do Medical teaching. Prof. Reynolds agreed with the speaker about industry constraints, but also noted that the device they had made was likely to be commercialised.
"The back story is that I want to help people with neurological disorders so I can do a lot of that from within here, but there are a lot of frustrations that continue . . . and it's not been a good year to ask any of us those questions because the University is tens of millions of dollars broke, and that will impact on people's jobs . . .
Q. How common is it to combine academia and industry in the way you have been talking about - commercialising this technology?
A. “Very uncommon, but becoming slightly more common . . . In the American system it’s very common . . . but here we are not particularly good at it, but there are some good examples. For example Dr. Sarah Diermeier (in Biochemistry). She’s amazing and one of the pioneers in this area, and Alison Heather is another. Actually commercialisation is not looked positively upon by some of your colleagues because they think you're sold out or just out to make money.” In fact, it is investors who make the money - and take the risk - because the cost of human trials is hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There are just some clever minds. Re Sarah Diermeier, she looks at long non-coding RNAs and has some molecules that target parts of those, and they can target specific cancers. She has some for various forms of cancer. The one that I'm more interested in is a brain cancer one that she has, but can't get it in the brain, whereas we can get things into the brain. We're now figuring out together what's going to enable us to get a drug into the brain that actually targets the cancer cells and leaves the good ones alone, because that's the problem with chemotherapy, you have off-target effects.”
Q. What’s the difference between a Neuroscientist and a doctor trained in Neurology?
A. “I can’t legally treat people! In a research capacity, yes, so we’ve done implanted stimulator research in stroke victims.” Although he is qualified as a doctor, one needs to keep up Registration to treat people. If someone mentions anything about their clinical condition, he has to leave it alone. A neuroscientist knows a lot about the science, as do doctors specialised in the area. "I work closely with neurologists and neurosurgeons. It’s a great synergy . . . they know what is important for people.” They know what is useful to research versus what is so rare, so better use could be made of limited resources.
Live a Life!
Asked for one final piece of advice, Prof. Reynolds promptly replied, “Live a life! It doesn’t seem like it’s very accessible in first year, but live a life . . . Do some other things. Read books. Do some exercise. Engage with friends.
"There's been some study coming out of the hospital here, about the super survivors, people who have lived well up to 100 or so." That research suggests engaging with friends is very important. “Women form social groups and they talk . . . Some men do that too. But men aren't that good at engaging. So engage, make friendships, lasting friendships.”
