An Interview with Dr. Tom Podor

1. What is your educational background?

Dr. Podor: I grew up in Windsor, Ontario. I did most of my grade and high school in Windsor, a couple years in Oakville, Ontario then after high school, went to the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario for my undergraduate degree in Biology and Physiology. I then went to graduate school; initially I came to Simon Fraser University, Department of Kinesiology, to do studies on exercise physiology and hyperbaric medicine, deep diving physiology and the effects of high pressure on the body and cardiovascular system.

I continued my studies in California at the University of Southern California. That's where I got into studying neurological control of circulation and blood flow and starting doing studies with microscopy on living animals. As part of my Master's, I basically built a heart by-pass machine and looked at the effects of pulsatile versus non pulsatile blood flow on microcirculation. After I did my Master's and PhD there I went to San Diego, La Jolla, the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, and spent five years there studying immuno-pathology of endothelial cells, inflammation and blood clots.

In 1989 I left San Diego. I'd been married to a San Diego girl and wanted to have a family, but I wanted to raise my family in Canada... so we left Southern California and moved back to Hamilton where I took up my first faculty position at McMaster University in 1989.

2. How did you come across iCAPTURE?

Dr. Podor: I knew of Bruce McManus and his work and where my work (blood clotting, platelets, thrombosis) was going. In a heart attack the events that happen cause damage to the heart. You have a blood clot and the lack of blood flow gives you a heart attack. I was slowly getting my story from the proteins that are in a blood clot that go into the heart after a heart attack. I wanted to be able to study how these proteins modulate the repair and healing of a damaged heart but at McMaster, there is nobody there doing anything on the heart.

So I started seeking out who I knew in Canada working on heart damage and inflammation of the heart, and Bruce was on the top of the list. There are several others in the country but basically I had excluded them all for a variety of reasons and this was my first choice. I cold-called Bruce to see if there was any future openings here. I think it was literally the day or two after they had just gotten notification of the grant for the original iCAPTURE CFI grant worth 16 million? I didn't know anything about this iCAPTURE, and it was only then that he explained to me on the phone what it was all about and I told him my interest in microscopy and he just jumped at the chance to get together and talk.

I essentially felt that this job was written for me. I came here because of this. There is a microscope here that we can put living animals on during surgery, we can look at things happening in the living heart, blood vessels, and lungs. Then there is the another microscope we can do similar experiments on with living cells, tissue sections and this sort of thing. Anything and everything that I've ever wanted to be able to possibly do in microscopy is right there on the table for me.That's why I came to iCAPTURE. Give me that microscope and I'll make things happen!

3. What do you do at iCAPTURE?

Dr. Podor: They brought me on as Co-Director of the Core 3 Confocal Facility. I image cells, tissues and molecules in cells and tissues. I can bring some of my background in blood clotting and the kind of work I've done into this group. There's a lot of people interested in the blood vessel and the blood vessel wall and endothelial cells that line the blood vessels, but I'm probably the only one around here that's interested in the plasma proteins that cause blood clots when there is damage to these vessels.

I represent something new for this facility but at the same time, they've got areas of expertise that I could never get back at McMaster's, like hard injury models that I can now use. I think it's a perfect marriage . Where I'm bringing to the table my background in coagulation and my expertise with laser imaging, they're giving me the equipment to do anything and everything that I could ever have possibly wanted to do for myself.

 

4. What do you see as being the next big thing in medical research?

Dr. Podor: Stem cell research is one of the biggest things that is going to be happening and I'm lucky enough to be right on the ground floor of some of this work right here in Vancouver.

Why is this the big area in research? We can now start regenerating tissue that we never thought we could before. We can generate new heart tissue that will reduce the amount of heart failure and deaths from heart attacks and heart failure. We've now got a realistically non-controversial source of stem cells: from your own bone marrow.

 

5. What do you do outside of work?

Dr. Podor: My love is still photography, underwater photography, and astronomy. I've got a good telescope and I'm saving my nickels to buy a nice GPS satellite tracker and much more powerful 14" electrolen, something that I could really use to start taking multi-colour images of nebulae. So that's my next decade, trying to get into amateur astro-photography. All I've done to date is take pictures of the moon. I also enjoy coaching (soccer, baseball), and boating.

6. How did you get interested in science?

Dr. Podor: I've been a nerd all my life. I knew I loved microscopy in grade 5. The first time I saw a microscope was when somebody had a microscope with a slide with bee legs under it. For Christmas, just after my 11th birthday, I decided I really, really wanted this microscope. On the back of my Batman comics, there was a junior sales kit of America deal that for selling 25 boxes of Christmas cards, you would win a chemistry set, a bicycle, or a doll.

I really wanted to get a microscope, so I ordered the kit. I was only in grade 6 so I went around the neighbourhood, walking my butt off. All I sold was 6 boxes so I was pretty disappointed. Came home crying "Mom, Mom, I'll never be able to sell these stupid Christmas boxes, no one's ever going to buy these cards. I'll never get my microscope". So my mother bought 19 boxes of Christmas cards, and I got my microscope under the Christmas tree. I still have that microscope today.

I was dissecting frogs when I was 12 years old. I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world. A couple of years later, my dad had his first heart attack and that's when I really got interested in the heart, and so my career has very much been driven by my dad and his heart attack.

7. How does Vancouver and the scientific community here compare to other cities as being a leader in scientific research?

Dr. Podor: With my comparison, the only thing that would be close to comparison would be Toronto. There's large groups in London Ontario at Western. McMaster's has a lot good people in blood clotting and lung research but not in heart research. If I look at the overall picture, the school and what UBC does versus McMaster, Toronto and Montreal, I would think we're up there with the best of all of them.

8. Where do you think your research program will be in 5 years? 10 years?

Dr. Podor: I've already made a big change in my work just since I've been here. I see myself getting more into designing protocols, ways of regenerating tissue and introducing genetic products like cardio protective genes, and cells transplanted into hearts with damaged tissues so the gene product would be able to help facilitate healing and/or prevention.

I will always be interested in looking at the degradation of blood clotting and other tissue, because it's such a fundamental process that's involved in so many processes that I can apply it to damage to the blood vessel wall, to heart disease, lung disease, cancer. It's the kind of system that if you're an expert in it, you can apply it to any kind of diseased state some way or another.

9. If you could describe yourself with just one word, what would it be?

Dr Podor: Dreamer.