Among the notable things about this presentation by a Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science teacher with an impressive research history was his evident sense of humour and ready approachability.
[NOTE: All comments in square brackets are those of the editor]
“My name’s Joel, I studied Chemistry. I grew up in Melbourne. I can eat and talk!” [Questions began before he had completed his breakfast!] Prof. Tyndall said he was unsure what the members present wanted him to talk about. He explained that he had talked to Isabella prior to this talk - who had commented that she 'really wanted to study Pharmacy from the age of about 15’! “I really haven’t planned much, because as a lecturer, I can talk for hours! . . . Can I have a show of hands of people who really know what they are doing or really want to do what they’re studying?” (Most of those present raised their hands).
Beginnings
“I left high school and went to university straight away, and started an Economics degree - based on what was going on economically in the 80’s. when there was an economic boom. I had studied Legal Studies at school - that was my 6th paper - I dropped that in the final year . . . Went back to Science, and Chemistry, and that is where the pathway has continued. I started at Monash University doing Economics. I changed to an Institute of Technology Applied Science course at the Polytechnic, which after a year was taken over by the University - so I was back where I should have been! I did second year Chemistry . . . I can’t remember any of the other papers that I did, if you can believe that. I thought, ‘Right, I’ve been here long enough. Let’s see if I can get some bits and pieces in place. So I got some decent marks, but I could have done better . . . But at the time, I also realised I was doing Chemistry quite well. I don’t think it was an official double major, but my third year was only Chemistry papers, and I managed to get the marks that I wanted. Got into Honours, and the nature of what I wanted to do was a research project that was around biologically active molecules . . . Finished the Honours, and I was telling myself I didn’t really want a job at that stage . . . My naivety overwhelmed my decisions . . . Started a Ph.D. The project - I worked out after six months wasn’t really what I wanted to do specifically. So I stopped. Pretty much dead on. During that Summer I had gone up to Brisbane for a Summer Studentship around the technique of molecular modelling. At the time that was fairly new, and relatively powerful. Everyone can probably now do similar things on their mobile phones! There was a significant cost, of around A$10,000-12,000 for the computers . . . So I went up to Brisbane (Centre for Drug Discovery and Development) to do the Ph.D."
"I work in the School of Pharmacy, though I’m not a Pharmacist. I teach Medicinal Chemistry to Pharmacy students, and also have a Management role as Associate Dean (International), but we won’t talk about that unless there’s a need."
"So my Ph.D. was finished . . . around the molecular recognition of disease, so my interests spanned a whole lot of things like HIV, Alzheimer’s, inflammation, etc. A very good friend of mine who I met in Brisbane terms his role as ’TV chemist’, because he sits there in front of what were basically large TV screens (CRT monitors) and looks at molecules.”
From there Prof Tyndall moved on to a post-Doc position in Edinburgh, had a great time, managed to publish a couple of papers, and then, “it wasn’t necessarily the time to come back, I could have looked for more work, as it were . . . my [now] wife was still in Brisbane, so it was time to go back! And then we got married. I worked in Brisbane for - not sure for exactly how long, 8 months to 2 years, then, about 20 years ago, got the job at Otago . . . I came in at the junior end as a lecturer, and I’ve moved up the scale . . . Continued on the research, [and] obviously teach to these guys [indicating the some Pharmacy students present], and I’m teaching on the Pharmaceutical science degree . . . Continue the research, specifically around infectious diseases, with cancer, and specific classes of proteins as well.”
Question Time
Q. “Your move to Otago, was that quite an obvious step to you, or were you uncertain about what to do?”
A. “That’s a very good question! . . . I was in Brisbane, working in the same place as I did my Ph.D . . . still working with my Ph.D. supervisor. At least in my mind, it could be said ‘am I actually independent from him, or not? So we decided it was time to look for another job. There was a job at Monash, and a job here. People were asking, ‘What are you going to do if you get offered both? Thankfully that never happened! The progression in research in academia is to post-doc, you can do multiple post-docs, you can do extended post-docs. But at a certain stage one needs to start a career with a funded position. You may have heard the term ‘tenure’. In the States you have to prove yourself to get tenure, which means permanency. At Otago, it’s confirmation, which is not really that hard. You have to have reports for each of 5 years, then it’s validated."
:But the move was - I think, like any industry, there comes a time when you need to do something a bit different. There was a natural progression.“
Research into Alzheimer’s, HIV, etc.
Q. “Some of the research projects you did - can we hear more about that? Your most interesting one, in your opinion.”
A. “They’re all interesting! One of the interesting ones that I started with was around Alzheimer’s disease. The protein that forms the plaques - we actually had synthetic versions of that protein. We knew the structure. And I was looking at whether or not metals were binding. It is very scientific, and the technique that I was using - electron paramagnetic resonance - I don’t understand to this day. And I was literally doing experiments round the clock. That project, not so much the results, but the overall project has stuck with me, primarily because I published that in 1999. Since then, we haven’t learnt much more about it. It’s annoying, troubling, but fascinating.”
Q. “Was aluminium involved in that?”
A. “Yes and no. So my supervisor at the time . . . The story goes that the equipment they we were using to test aluminium was in an aluminium pot. I was looking at iron and copper specifically. And there’s discussion around radicals, and how the protein went from one shape to another to form the plaques, and how specifically did those metal ions bind to the protein. From a scientific point of view, I was trying to say it’s Chemistry, it’s Biology - it’s not really any of them. Because the techniques that you use are used for research rather than Chemistry or Biology."
"The other project that sticks out is around HIV. It’s the specific protein HIV protease. These viruses have a certain number of proteins, which you can probably count on two or three hands. HIV protease is one of the main early drug targets, and we were working on that. There’s literally a crystal structure where you can determine the structure of this protein. I don’t know if you guys know that, but I use this for teaching in Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Science."
"You guys would be aware of the disease. It’s an incredibly manageable condition. When I was in my formative years, it was a killer. Let’s jump to this decade, it has many overlaps with Covid, so we can correlate how the drugs were developed for HIV back to Covid and other viruses. So that’s some of the research. There’s lots of others.”
Research Topics Crossing Scientific Boundaries
Q. “Following on from that, do you have a specific interest in cancer, HIV and those sorts of diseases, you know, those currently incurable ones, or is that just coming in kind of naturally?”
A. “That’s sort of the latter. It’s sort of around opportunity. My research is quite collaborative.” Prof. Tyndall went on to explain, with an example of an infectious disease that someone is studying, with a drug type that might be useful in treating it. They might approach Prof. Tyndall with the idea of him looking at a target protein on the infectious organism, to see if the drug would affect that protein, and therefore be potentially useful in treating the infection. He noted that he has spent some time looking at proteases, that around 5% of the human genome consists of them. [Proteases are vital in several critical physiological actions, such as blood coagulation, - which is, of course, essential to reduce blood loss - are proteases, the most obvious perhaps being antithrombotics (thrombus = blood clot), with others used in hypertension and infectious diseases, for example.
“So, specific diseases, no. Ones that are hard to deal with? Yes. Because we're not there yet.”
Q. “You mentioned that your research is heavily collaborative. Have you ever have done anything with Dr. Diermeier in biochemistry? Because her research regarding specific cancer targeting RNA molecular markers is really cool.”
A. “I haven't done it yet. I'm very aware of the research. I have had a chat. So, not wanting to scare you, but for the last few years we've been looking at one area, small molecules to target another protein is in cancer. This protein is unregulated in certain types of cancer. We've specifically identified these molecules are more active in colorectal types of cancer. And the ‘busyness’ issue came around, and I needed to publish a paper before we can go and get projects or get grants. I've just published the paper."
":The next stage is to work out what we can do with these molecules. As a chemist, I do a lot of biology and stuff these days, I need to collaborate specifically with these people to work out the next stages in that area, because I don't have that expertise in cancer biology. “
Need for a Degree Giving Broader Experience in Professions
“I've been talking a lot to staff in the international area about advertising and promoting biomedical science. People come in to biomedical science first year, health science first year, maybe know what they want to do specifically. ‘I want to be a biochemist. I want to be a microbiologist.’ Though maybe you want to be a microbiologist and pharmacology is better."
"The option here is to start with something a little bit broader, so you get a taste of it, and then you can specialise. If you do microbiology, pharmacology, or whatever, you may actually end up researching infectious disease or cancer or other things. The techniques that you use and the skills that you use in that science area, not so much the professional programs, makes it very broad. So you specialise in a managed degree such as Biochemistry, and then you come out with the techniques to look at maybe something that's not necessarily in Biochemistry.“
How to Become a Pharmacist or Pharmaceutical Scientist
Q. “What’s the acceptance process from health science first year like? What kind of credits do you need to get into the pharmacy? “
A. “All the professional programs slightly reduced their eligibility thresholds. To get into pharmacy, it used to be an average of 65%. Now you must pass Health Sciences first year. It used to be 65% pharmacy and physiotherapy, and medical laboratory science. For pharmacy specifically you need to pass everything. So the odds are good from that aspect. If you're keen, you can pass."
"Medical laboratory science, physiotherapy and pharmacy have single program preference options. So it's generally recommended that if you want to do pharmacy, choose single program preference. That means you can't choose another program. But it means at admissions time they will look at those people first because they know you want to do pharmacy. If you don't want to do that, that's fine too.“
Q. “Are they wanting to accept like 120 next cohort or something like that?”
A.”Yes, ideally. We've had about 140 over the years. There is a website at the university called Limitation of Enrolment. I think it's a government requirement that we have that. I use that specifically as the numbers that we can take for any of the programs. And for want of a better term, I just call it the ‘bums on seats website’ because that's physically how many students we can take. In Pharmacy you can take up to 150, Physio is 120. Medicine is 320 currently. The past government and the current government have increased that, I think. The Labour government increased it this year by 20. And over the term of the initial parts of this year, the current National government have increased it by another 10, I think. And there's discussions and documents going around with the new degree, or whether or not there will be a new degree at Waikato. Because the Vice Chancellors of Auckland and here have put a document to the government saying that we can accommodate hundreds because we have the infrastructure, we have the technology, etc. So it's an ever-changing environment. And there’s a bigger demand for the health professions."
After Obtaining a Pharmacy Degree, what Are the Possibilities?
Q. Apart from research what else can you do with pharmacy - is there anything more like hands-on, or a person-to-care kind of situation?”
A. “I teach in the second year of pharmacy, and I teach the final year of pharmaceutical science. There are a lot of other things you can do in pharmacy. So we have historically not got a lot of research students from pharmacy, because it's a professional degree. We're training people to be pharmacists. And these days we have a pharmaceutical science degree, that's a lab-based degree, versus pharmacy, which is a clinical-based degree. And we sell it to you as dealing with people, or not dealing with people (Pharmaceutical Science). So pharmacy is dealing with people."
"There's opportunities for pharmacists to work, not only in the pharmacy, but the biggest demand for people trying to get jobs is in hospital pharmacy. You're part of a clinical team, you can specialise, you can change, you can specialise in oncology, we have a lecturer at the moment, who specialised in neonatal intensive care, so paediatrics. That's very much person-centred care. We have a pharmacy clinic, now that we use for patients and training. So we have patients come in, we have qualified pharmacists, teaching in the programme. Professional programmes all have qualified practitioners teaching to show what's going on. We also have pharmacists as prescribers, so that's another extension of the pharmacy. So there's heaps of scope to deal with patients, person-centred care. Apart from the fact that my body hurts because I try and exercise a lot, I don't take any drugs. But as people get older, we have what we call polypharmacy, so people have taken a number of drugs, for whatever reason, cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc. Sometimes they can be taking so many drugs, from health professional one, health professional two, health professional three, you can't see that actually they're taking this drug and that drug and they don't work together, or you're taking two of the same drug. We look at what's going on, and we deprescribe. I hope that answers part of your question. Anyone else got anything that's not Pharmacy?"
Q. Did you like your year in Edinburgh? Did you get an opportunity to travel around?
A. "Yes. The ‘Big OE’ which is what it's called in New Zealand. My wife moved from South Otago to Brisbane, with a view of going on her way to Europe, and got stuck in Brisbane for about ten years. So we went together, as soon as I finished my PhD, we went over there. We did a tiki tour around Europe, London, etc. . . Came back, had a position, and so went up to Edinburgh. I moved in with a bunch of guys, there was an English guy, Irish guys, Scotsmen, someone from Northern Ireland. I had friends in Italy I went to visit, my in-laws came, went to Spain, went through England and Wales, I had Swedish friends that I met in Brisbane, so I went to Sweden . . . Lots of opportunities. We're isolated in this country. To get anywhere, it's a long way. I literally just came back from Malaysia and Singapore, two weeks ago. It took me eight hours to get out of New Zealand. So, when you're over there, you get on a plane or a train, you're in another country. So, the opportunity is there. I'd recommend it."
Q. I guess I've just got another, sort of a general question. Is there any advice that you'd like to offer these guys that you wish you had yourself when you were an undergrad?
A. "I’m not really one that generally looks back. Take the opportunities, learn from your mistakes, take what you can from them. Looking back, I don't really regret starting out doing economics. It just is what it is. I mean, I'm here now, having fun. So, I'm lucky enough to have two children, a daughter who's your age. [Looks at watch] No. she’ll still be asleep - she’s just over there."
"Do look after yourself. Study hard, or at least enough to pass. That's what you need to do."
"This is another stage, then there’s another stage, and another stage of life, and so on."
Not Getting a Place on Your First Choice is NOT the End of the World
Q. [Could not decipher this question owing to the amount of laughter! - Isobella commented: “No questions are silly!”]
A. “I like bananas. I have a banana pretty much every day, so, yes. If you're looking at getting into health professional programs, obviously, applications are open now until the 15th. You can apply for all of the programs. You can apply for one program. If, hypothetically, you wanted to do dentistry, and you're unsure if you're going to get in, select another program. If you don't select another program, you're not likely to get another offer. If you don't get into that program, that's not the end of the world. That's the advice I would give."
"If you fail, - as in my case, - things still work out. I have a job at the university. I have a good job. My family's here. I live in another country. So, keep your options open. If you don't know what you want to do, that's fine, too, because that's where I was. I went to university. Economics sounded good. Chemistry ended up being better. So, that worked out. And without having the idea of: ‘I want to be this, and I want to head out of this path’, I did this. An opportunity came up. I did this. An opportunity came up, and I'm here. There's plenty of opportunities."
"Cliché adage: ‘Be the best person you can be’. So, I mean, if there's any other nitty-gritty on admissions or programs or biomedical science, let’s hear it. Commerce? - Not so much. Sciences, sure.”
Q. “It was your second choice, not your first. Would you say it was a scary thing to do?”
A. “I wouldn't say it was first choice and second choice. I had done math and science at high school. And at the age of 17, not knowing anything about the world, literally, economics and money sounded good. I couldn't do that. I probably could, but I didn't apply myself. So, I went back to what I could do and what I knew I could do. For me, the biggest challenge and what was daunting was moving to Brisbane because I grew up in Melbourne. I mean, New Zealand's different. Most of you guys are from somewhere else. You have the nice environment at the colleges, but you're still away from your network and your family. That was the biggest thing. I grew up in Melbourne. I was going out. I went to Uni there, but then I was like, right, Joel, you have the choice of leaving everything that you know and the safety, and going to a whole new place. It took me a while to decide that, but I did."
"Because that's the sort of ‘taking opportunities when they come’, option. - Good question.“
Q. “I guess [this is] another question sort of pertaining to research and your decision to do that. You mentioned not wanting to immediately go into a job, go into working, but were there other factors about research that particularly inspired you? Because these guys, most of them probably haven't even thought that far yet, but was there something where all along you were kind of like, oh, it would be really cool to find out.“
A. “Again, I wasn't smart enough to actually know that going into research was the thing that I was choosing. It was an option that I took. Because I found out it was a continuation of chemistry, like how I'm applying the chemistry knowledge that I had on a biological aspect which happened to be drugs that we were using. Can we make a better platinum-based anticancer drug? The answer is no. But it gave me the spark and the inclination to be able to chase those things. Some people don't have that. Particularly in science, not so much in professional programs, but particularly in science, the more qualification you have, the more qualified you are to do research."
"A PhD, in the simplest possible terms, is a qualification that shows that you can do research. If you do a PhD in chemistry, in pharmacology, it shows you any employer, whether it be a bank, a hospital, or a university, or a biopharmaceutical company, it shows you can do research. You don't have to use that field of research you did for your PhD. But it indicates that you can do something. Professional degrees show that you can do what's expected as a pharmacist, say. More generalist degrees show that you can apply yourself generally in that field. And, I think, people who qualify as bachelors of law often don't become lawyers. Often they go into business. But they know, they've shown that they can apply themselves. So, get some pieces of paper! You can do research. You need to start with Honours."
What Can You Do with a Pharmacy Degree?
Q. After working with the pharmacy course for a bit, what would you say is, the cool thing about pharmacy that you would tell a pharmacist student?
A. "The cool thing about pharmacy is that you're working with people. When you are doing a pharmacy or health professional degree you're in the same cohort. So these guys are doing the same classes together for three years. It's not like, ‘Oh, I saw John he’s doing chemistry and I saw Jill, she’s doing Biochemistry and they never overlap. Everyone's doing the same thing. So you've got a big cohort of about 100 students each year and you get to know students from other years as well."
"So, Pharmacy - working with people - you can specialise - you have job security. I'm just trying to think of all the advertising stuff. [Chuckles all round]. You can have your own business - you can work in a hospital - you can work in government regulatory environments - you can work as a medical writer. That's a specific vocation which requires more training. A lot of vocations and roles do require more training, like research. The pharmacy degree - you do your Bachelor of Pharmacy and you’re not yet a pharmacist. You do a one year internship and that's run by the Pharmaceutical Council of New Zealand. It's a paid role - you get paid reasonably well. For that year, you must pass the exam. So to become a pharmacist, it's five years worth of study. And then there is further study. You never stop learning, whether it be formal or informal."
[Isabella:] Any more questions? It looks like we will be finishing early. Joel, anything else you want to share?
“You guys are really lucky, having the option of eggs for breakfast every day! If people have any questions, get my email, it’s on the School of Pharmacy website. There's no such thing as a silly question - and I say that because I've done stuff - I've done life up to - well, I’m 54 this year. So, happy to share. “
Q. “When you need to do an internship, how do you find a place to do it?”
A. “Mostly anywhere. Again, I'm not involved in the clinical side, but when students go on placements, there's a community placement, hospital placement, and rural placement, up to the end of third year. Then fourth year is rotations. Around those four options, you will be talking to pharmacies and pharmacists. They might say, ‘Hey, do you want to come back and do an internship?’ There's no system around the pharmacies and pharmacists. Internships are available. There's one up in Northland, Kaiteriteri, who actually offers a scholarship because they struggle to get people there. Hospitals are in demand, but you go out and find an internship, they are available. There will be pharmacies as well.”
