Massey Magazine November 2001 |

A Kiwi in New York

MASSEY meets HIV researcher Fleur François.

What were you doing when you heard the news on 11 September 2001? Cell biologist Dr Fleur François was early to work at the Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York, preparing to ‘cook’ a batch of cells.

She was feeling good. Her research seeking antidotes to HIV was progressing well. She had just signed a contract for a further two years at Mt Sinai and her Manhattan social life was sharp and fun.

When we saw her, eight days after the terrorist attacks, she said one of her first thoughts was that nothing would be the same again. Events since then, including eight bomb scares at Mt Sinai, have confirmed her perception. Her parents in Auckland were anxious. She said she has thought very carefully about whether she wants to stay in New York for another two years. She is fascinated by the potential of her research. She enjoys her new friends and she loves New York and her flat in Fort Greene in Brooklyn. On balance, she thinks she will stay.

Fleur François took up a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Infectious Disease at Mt Sinai in October last year. She returned to Palmerston North in May this year to graduate Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry. She had also completed a BSc in biochemistry and genetics and a BSc (Honours) at Massey. For both degrees she achieved an A+ grade average. She was a Massey Scholar.

Her three-and-a-half years of PhD research examined the regulation of cell death in nerve cells. Understanding the regulation of cells and why they live or die will create opportunities to develop methods to fight a range of diseases, including Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, leukaemia and other cancers – and HIV.

New York was a considered choice for Fleur. She interviewed extensively throughout the United States and the United Kingdom, considering positions at Cambridge in the UK, Seattle, and Sloan-Kettering in New York. She chose Mt Sinai because of its involvement in groundbreaking, government-funded HIV research. The school chose her because of the fit they saw between her sought-after skills and knowledge and their needs. Satisfaction with the arrangement is mutual.

Armed with Fleur’s emailed directions, we found the Mt Sinai Hospital on 101st Street, between Madison and 5th Avenues. You reach the school through the hospital foyer. We reach the foyer only after passing a security check at the front door: questions, a search of handbags and pockets, IDs checked. Inside the foyer, noise, crowds and chaos. Think ER.

Through double doors and up the express lift to the school, the ambience becomes functional and quiet. Fleur works on the 11th floor, sharing a large room with two other researchers. By New York standards, 11 floors up is regarded as barely above ground level but now she wonders whether it might be more pleasant to work lower down. She talks a lot about the bomb scares, which required the evacuation of all staff, 1,500 people on the street, projects interrupted and, in some cases, efforts wasted. She is embarrassed to admit she is also nervous about the lifts, after being trapped in one for 10 minutes earlier in the week.

“It’s inevitable that you over-react to something like that. We’re all on edge. The bombing was horrifying, depressing and quite demoralising. The initial shock will wear off but the changes to day-to-day

living will not, I think. The fact that I am searched every time I go in or out of the building. The bomb threats. The uncertainty about how long it will take to get home, whether trains are running and where they will stop, whether certain parts of Manhattan are closed or open. And when you do get home, even that’s different. You can’t sit outside because of the dust and the bits of paper and the smell drifting over from the World Trade Centre site. It even comes in the windows. But at least Mt Sinai is uptown, well away from the WTC, which is why only 12 of the survivors were treated here. It’s worse in other places. My friends working on Wall Street still have no phones, no fax, no email, no Internet capabilities.

“I now come to work more happily each day because it feels safer than being at home or in the subway. I think it will be a long time before that changes.”

With a team of colleagues, Fleur does both basic and applied research – she specialises in ‘signal transduction’ – on three major research projects, all HIV-related. “The most exciting, the fun stuff, involves several new drugs that have the potential to prevent HIV and we hope will be subject to full clinical trials. We’ve already made progress. For example, we know they are not toxic and we know they block the infection. But before we can move further, we need to know why.”

A second project, labelled HIVAN, has a narrower focus, in attempting to find causes and cures for the increasing incidence of kidney complications in HIV patients. “It’s new research in an area that’s been barely touched. And of course it has particular relevance in the United States, especially in New York, because kidney failure is showing up strongly in the African American population. The federal government has made it a research priority so there is plenty of funding.”

The extent of available funding and consequent resources for HIV and other projects has blown Fleur away, after years of penny-pinching restraint in New Zealand. “The support for research, and the very productive co-operation and resource-sharing between the hospital and the school, are reasons why I’ll probably elect to stay at Mt Sinai.

“I’m now working with million dollar machines on a US multi-million dollar budget. It’s like getting the keys to a vast candy store. It has created a very real shift in my thinking and approach.

Here I can look at the wider picture, with the freedom to use virtually any tool, any means to find a solution. In New Zealand where funding is restricted, you would confine your activities – and your theories – to the resources available. It’s going from a very limited approach to an ‘anything is possible’ culture. It’s realising how important that is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are or how important the outcomes may be, you can’t achieve much without support. At first it was quite overwhelming. But,” and she laughs, “it hasn’t taken long to learn to cope.”

The shoestring years at Massey, however, have given her an edge over her Mt Sinai colleagues. “They know I won’t squander the research budget and that’s part of my reputation here. I’m used to having to make everything from scratch, making sure that it will last a long time and perhaps can even be recycled. Others regard this as strange. They’ll find me washing something and say, ‘Just throw it away!’ There is a lot of waste. People are used to having an open cheque book. But I don’t think I’ll change my habits – they’re ingrained. All the same, the lack of funding for important research may be the one thing that will stop me returning to New Zealand. That’s quite something for me to say. I always thought I would use my education and qualifications to work on health research problems relevant to New Zealand.”

Fleur has found another way to make a mark as a New Zealander in Manhattan. She is a driving force in the Kiwi Club of New York, whose 50-odd members meet monthly, usually in a bar. The club is supported by the New Zealand Consulate, the New Zealand Trade Board and the New Zealand Beef and Lamb Board, which recently ordered in 50 legs of lamb for the expats. How to distribute them? Fleur says the organiser for the night rang around the favoured clubs and bars and asked if they could accommodate 50 New Zealanders for a night out. “As usual, no problem. Then she had to explain that also arriving would be a few hundred kilos of raw New Zealand meat, and we’d need space in a refrigerator. We found a great bar prepared to take us on and chill the meat and we had a great night. That’s New York.”

When Fleur remembers she again has cells cooking back at the hospital, it’s time to go. We’ve been talking in a nearby Starbucks and the level of New York talk and music has become unbearable for us, if not for Fleur. We want to go up the Empire State Building. Above the hubbub, she shouts out the way while advising us to do something else, like take the Staten Island ferry. When we arrive, the Empire State is roped off, guarded and closed. But, again, Fleur’s directions turn out to be impeccable.