Women In Medical Research

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30191, 24 July 1963, Page 2

Women In Medical Research

Advanced research into diabetes and breast cancer are being carried out by the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation at Princess Margaret Hospital. Two of the key figures in this programme are women— Miss S. E. Mann, sister of the ward in which the medical unit’s patients are cared for, and Mrs M. G. Metcalf, a chemist with the unit.

Mrs Metcalfs work is concerned with a relatively new field of research in medicine, the study of steroids, a type of hormone. Important chemical substances essential for life, their level in the bloodstream has a bearing on malfunctions causing disease. It is now possible to measure steroids. For example, it has been discovered that in a pint of blood there is one 50-millionth of an ounce of cortisol, the most important steroid in the body. It is Mrs Metcalfs job to develop steroid-measuring techniques necessary for research. She is also in charge of routine steroid research.

“Only in the last 10 years has steroid research been so far advanced as to enable it to be allied with the clinical appearance of a disease,” she said yesterday. This co-related research was facilitated in Canterbury because the medical unit had an interdependent laboratory and 10 beds for research patients in a medical ward. The ward is under the charge of Sister Mann, who did a post-graduate course at the medical research unit at Hammersmith Hospital, London, and who has been with the Canterbury unit since it

opened three years and a half ago. Sister Mann organises tests ordered for patients and supervises them and accurate recording of them. Patients from many parts of New Zealand have been admitted to the unit, which is staffed entirely by trained nurses. Besides the ward and laboratory, there is a metabolic kitchen, opened last month, where special test diets are prepared.

Director of the unit is Dr. D. W. Beaven. Other senior members of the research staff are Dr. E. A. Espiner, a medical research fellow, Dr. L. M. Miles, who is in charge of the diabetic laboratory, and Dr. A. C. Arcus, the chief biochemist. Women on the staff, besides Mrs Metcalf, include three technicians Mrs V. H. Longbottom And Misses I.des Tombe and J. Smith. Donors to the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation have provided specialised equipment needed for steroid research. This includes a gas chromotograph, a machine for

isolating individual steroids fairly rapidly, which will be instaUed and in use later this year. Another piece of equipment, a spectrophotometer, for measuring the constituent amount of colour in test substances, also came from funds.

To help its work, the foundation will have the proceeds from the screening of “PT 109,” which will have its film premiere in Christchurch on Thursday.