WISENET Journal 35, July 1994, pp. 9-10.
Professor Susan Pond was nominated to a personal chair in medicine at the University of Queensland in 1990. She is the first woman to have such an honour, and has quickly followed this with other achievements; the Wellcome Australia Medal for distinguished scientific achievement in innovative clinical and research contributions to therapeutics and toxicology, and in 1994 she was made a member of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours list and became Chairman of the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee (ADEC). She is at the forefront of her field in the world.
Susan Pond was born and educated in Sydney. She obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery with first Class Honours from the University of Sydney in 1969 and was a Resident Medical Officer at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1969-1970, and Medical Registrar at St Vincents hospital in Sydney in 1971-1972. After becoming a fellow of the Royal Australian College of Physicians in 1972, Professor Pond was awarded an NH&MRC Medical Postgraduate Research Scholarship from 1973-76 and joined the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at St Vincents hospital. She received a Doctorate of Medicine from the University of New South Wales in 1977 for research on drug metabolism by cytochrome P450 in human liver.
A Merck Sharp and Dohme international Fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology enabled two years of post-doctoral studies at the University of Californa, San Francisco (UCSF) on drug disposition in patients with liver disease, and clinical toxicology. She joined the Faculty at UCSIF in 1978 and remained there for the next six years. In 1984 she took up the position of Associate Professor of Medicine and Clinical pharmacology at the University of Queensland in the Department of Medicine at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.
Professor Pond's chnical and research interests include the physiology of the hepatic uptake and disposition of drugs and nutrients, novel therapeutic approaches to the treatment of poisoned patients, and the mechanisms of the neurotoxicity of the antipsychotic drug, haloperidol. A brief description of these three areas of her research follows.
The liver is one of the favourite sites for the spread of cancer from organs such as the colon, pancreas, breasts and lung. The chances for survival of people with liver cancer are low. The dual blood supply to the liver from the hepatic artery and portal vein, size of the organ, and abundant availability of nutritional material are factors favouring cancer growth. Surgical resection and cure of the disease are possible only in a small minority of patients. Professor Pond's group is studying new forms of drug therapy with a view towards improving the poor outcome of most patients.
The group is also making steady progress towards the development of a treatment for poisoning by paraquat, an herbicide used agriculturally. Using antibodies against paraquat produced in mice, the group has been able to rescue cells from the poisoning. These were isolated from the main target organ for toxicity, the lung. Now, using genetic engineering techniques, they are producing from human genes paraquat antibodies which will be tested eventually in patients.
Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness that affects one in every hundred people. It usually develops before the age of thirty five years and can result in a lifetime of disability. The use of medications such as chlorpromazine and haloperidol has revolutionised the treatment of the disease, but the side effects, particularly the movement disorders and blood abnormalities, add substantially to the debility of many patients. Professor Pond's group is investigating aspects of treatment of this illness, placing specific emphasis on how the drugs or their breakdown products produce the side effects.