Suzanne Cory: from a table to the top

Abstract

Suzanne Cory has recently been appointed to the directorship of Australia's premier biomedical research facility, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne where, together with her husband Jerry Adams, she has headed the Molecular Biology Unit for the past 24 years. Their introduction of molecular biology into an environment with great strength in cell and animal biology resulted in a very exciting and productive era at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (affectionately known as WEHI, pronounced ‘wee-high’).Figure 1Figure 1Suzanne Cory.View Large Image Figure ViewerDownload Hi-res image Download (PPT) Suzanne Cory began her career at Melbourne University, trying to juggle her combined interests in the arts and sciences. After an inspiring lecture by the current Director of the WEHI, immunologist Sir Gustav Nossal, and an exposure to research during her Masters degree, she decided to pursue a career in scientific research and set off to Cambridge to work in Francis Crick's department at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory for Molecular Biology. Having obtained one of the few scholarships then available to women for doctoral research overseas, Dr Cory used the new techniques developed by Fred Sanger for sequencing RNA to establish the primary structure of the elongator methionine tRNA molecule. While in Cambridge, two very significant things happened to Dr Cory; her passion and dedication to scientific research became firmly established and she met her husband, Jerry Adams, who was doing his postdoctoral research on functional studies of the initiator methionine tRNA molecule. Both these things made a return to Australia, to which Dr Cory is very attached, more unlikely. However, when they visited Australia to get married, she enticed her husband with the Australian beaches and they discovered that WEHI provided an environment in which they would both like to work. They returned to Europe to postdoctoral positions in Geneva, where they established their close working relationship while studying R17 bacteriophage RNA as a model for messenger RNA. During this time, they approached Gus Nossal on one of his European visits and were able to convince him that the newly emerging techniques of molecular biology could be used to solve many of the fundamental problems of immunology.Figure 2 In 1971, having secured three years' funding from the Amercian National Institutes of Health (WEHI investigators are not eligible for funding from Australia's research funding bodies), Drs Cory and Adams walked into WEHI ready to study immunoglobulin mRNA. What greeted them was an empty storeroom containing only a table. At the end of three years, however, they had discovered the peculiar methyl-cap structure found at the beginning of eukaryotic mRNAs — now known to be essential for ribosome attachment. From this point on, their research has gone from strength to strength. They discovered that the characteristic chromosomal translocations observed in certain tumours, such as Burkitts' lymphoma, can result in oncogene activation. This paradigm paved the way for the identification of many other oncogenes, including bcl-2, which is translocated in follicular lymphoma. It was in Dr Cory's laboratory that David Vaux, then a PhD student, discovered that the function of bcl-2 is to enhance cell survival. Unravelling the biochemical basis for the activity of bcl-2 and its cousins in regulating cell survival will remain the main focus of Dr Cory's research as she assumes the directorship of WEHI. The decision for Drs Cory and Adams to return to a very uncertain research future in Australia was counterbalanced by the attractive lifestyle that was promised. Dr Cory has always had a very strong attachment to Australia and a profound love of the natural wilderness, as well as close family ties. To satisfy these desires, every year she and Dr Adams head into the Australian desert in their red four-wheel drive vehicle to enjoy its immense natural beauty and solitude in the company of her extended family. The magic of these times combined with her undeniable success as an internationally recognized research scientist confirm that the decision to return was the correct one.