Julia Margaret Polak

Abstract

Pathologist who researched the development of laboratory organs for transplantation, born June 26, 1939, she died on Aug 11, 2014, aged 75 years. Professor Dame Julia Polak occupies a unique place in the annals of transplant medicine having seen it as a researcher, transplant patient, organ donor, and, tragically, as the bereaved mother of a donor. After pioneering work in histochemistry, she discovered in her mid 50s that she was suffering from one of the diseases she had been studying: pulmonary hypertension. She was working at the time, in the mid-1990s, with the transplant surgeon Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub of Harefield Hospital who used to send her samples of diseased lung tissue for her research. Yacoub visited her at Hammersmith Hospital and explained she needed a heart-lung transplant. “I told her the pressure in her lungs was sky high and there was only one way to treat it at that time. Like any patient she found it difficult to accept. But she had very strong family support. After a while she did accept it.” Polak waited some 2 months in intensive care before Yacoub performed a domino transplant, giving her a new heart and lungs while transplanting her own heart into another patient. Infection and rejection meant that she made a slow recovery, but once she was back on her feet she presented her own case at the monthly Grand Round at Hammersmith Hospital, displaying her diseased lungs and commenting: “I am a particularly vivid example of medical progress—and full of plans for the future.” Polak lived for almost two more decades and at the time of her death was one of the world's longest surviving lung transplant patients. “She was meticulous in following her immunosuppressive regime. She rang me all the time. That is why she survived for 19 years”, said Yacoub. At the time of her transplant, Polak was already known internationally for her work on hormones and the use of immunohistochemistry to make peptides visible under the microscope, a technique now used in laboratories worldwide. But she did not slow down. As a result of her experience, she resolved to find an alternative to organ transplantation and switched the focus of her research to regenerative medicine. A couple of months after her operation she set up what became the Julia Polak Research Trust, and in 1998 established the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Centre at Imperial College London, based at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, with Larry Hench, Professor of Biomedical Engineering. They adopted a multidisciplinary approach from the start, which was unusual at the time, but has since become standard practice. Together, Polak and Hench experimented with materials such as bioglass, which Hench had discovered in 1969, to create scaffolds on which lung epithelial tissue could be grown. Her group was among the first to work with embryonic stem cells, which she hoped might one day serve to regenerate a lung. Professor Lord Darzi, surgeon and Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, said: “Larry and Julia made a significant contribution to the science of tissue repair and it remains the basis of regenerative medicine. But there is a long way to go. Replacing the cartilage in a knee is not the same as transplanting a lung.” He added: “She was a formidable lady and she did a lot to raise awareness of tissue engineering as far as funders were concerned.” Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where her Jewish grandparents had emigrated from eastern Europe to escape persecution, Polak qualified in medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, in 1961, and specialised in pathology, following the example of her uncle, Moises Polak, an eminent pathologist. In 1968, she moved to the UK with her physician husband Daniel Catovsky and their first child. Polak completed graduate studies at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital. In 1984, she was made professor of endocrine pathology, becoming head of the Department of Histochemistry in 1991. Polak is survived by her husband and by two sons, Sebastian and Michael. Her daughter, Marina, a barrister, was killed by a motorcyclist while crossing a road in 2011. Polak took some comfort from the fact that, unbeknown to her, Marina had signed up to the organ donor register and her organs went to improve the lives of other people, including a baby.