- About
- Strategic Plan
- Structure
- Governance
- Scientific divisions
- ACRF Cancer Biology and Stem Cells
- ACRF Chemical Biology
- Advanced Technology and Biology
- Bioinformatics
- Blood Cells and Blood Cancer
- Clinical Translation
- Epigenetics and Development
- Immunology
- Infectious Diseases and Immune Defence
- Inflammation
- Personalised Oncology
- Population Health and Immunity
- Structural Biology
- Ubiquitin Signalling
- Laboratory operations
- Funding
- Annual reports
- Human research ethics
- Scientific integrity
- Institute life
- Career opportunities
- Business Development
- Partnering opportunities
- A complete cure for HBV
- A stable efficacious Toxoplasma vaccine
- Activating SMCHD1 to treat FSHD
- Fut8 Sugar coating immuno oncology
- Improving vision outcomes in retinal detachment
- Intercepting inflammation with RIPK2 inhibitors
- Novel inhibitors for the treatment of lupus
- Novel malaria vaccine
- Novel therapy for drug-resistant cancers
- Precision epigenetics silencing SMCHD1 to treat Prader Willi Syndrome
- Rethinking CD52 a therapy for autoimmune disease
- Selective JAK inhibition: mimicking SOCS activity
- Targeting minor class splicing
- Treating Epstein-Barr virus associated malignancies
- Royalties distribution
- Start-up companies
- Partnering opportunities
- Collaborators
- Publications repository
- Awards
- Discoveries
- Centenary 2015
- History
- Contact us
- Research
- Diseases
- Cancer
- Development and ageing
- Immune health and infection
- Research fields
- Research technologies
- People
- Anne-Laure Puaux
- Associate Professor Aaron Jex
- Associate Professor Alyssa Barry
- Associate Professor Andrew Webb
- Associate Professor Anne Voss
- Associate Professor Chris Tonkin
- Associate Professor Daniel Gray
- Associate Professor Edwin Hawkins
- Associate Professor Emma Josefsson
- Associate Professor Ethan Goddard-Borger
- Associate Professor Grant Dewson
- Associate Professor Isabelle Lucet
- Associate Professor James Murphy
- Associate Professor Jeanne Tie
- Associate Professor Jeff Babon
- Associate Professor Joan Heath
- Associate Professor Justin Boddey
- Associate Professor Marco Herold Marco Herold
- Associate Professor Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat
- Associate Professor Marnie Blewitt
- Associate Professor Matthew Ritchie
- Associate Professor Melissa Davis
- Associate Professor Oliver Sieber
- Associate Professor Peter Czabotar
- Associate Professor Rachel Wong
- Associate Professor Ruth Kluck
- Associate Professor Sandra Nicholson
- Associate Professor Seth Masters
- Associate Professor Sumitra Ananda
- Associate Professor Tim Thomas
- Associate Professor Wai-Hong Tham
- Associate Professor Wei Shi
- Catherine Parker
- Dr Anna Coussens
- Dr Ashley Ng
- Dr Ben Tran
- Dr Bernhard Lechtenberg
- Dr Bob Anderson
- Dr Brad Sleebs
- Dr Diana Hansen
- Dr Drew Berry
- Dr Gemma Kelly
- Dr Gwo Yaw Ho
- Dr Hui-Li Wong
- Dr Hélène Jousset Sabroux
- Dr Ian Majewski
- Dr Ian Street
- Dr Jacqui Gulbis
- Dr James Vince
- Dr Joanna Groom
- Dr John Wentworth
- Dr Kate Sutherland
- Dr Kelly Rogers
- Dr Leanne Robinson
- Dr Leigh Coultas
- Dr Lucy Gately
- Dr Margaret Lee
- Dr Mary Ann Anderson
- Dr Maryam Rashidi
- Dr Matthew Call
- Dr Melissa Call
- Dr Misty Jenkins
- Dr Philippe Bouillet
- Dr Rebecca Feltham
- Dr Rhys Allan
- Dr Samir Taoudi
- Dr Sant-Rayn Pasricha
- Dr Shalin Naik
- Dr Sheau Wen Lok
- Dr Simon Chatfield
- Dr Stephen Wilcox
- Dr Tracy Putoczki
- Guillaume Lessene
- Helene Martin
- Keely Bumsted O'Brien
- Mr Joel Chibert
- Mr Simon Monard
- Mr Steve Droste
- Ms Carolyn MacDonald
- Ms Samantha Ludolf
- Professor Alan Cowman
- Professor Andreas Strasser
- Professor Andrew Lew
- Professor Andrew Roberts
- Professor Clare Scott
- Professor David Huang
- Professor David Komander
- Professor David Vaux
- Professor Doug Hilton
- Professor Gabrielle Belz
- Professor Geoff Lindeman
- Professor Gordon Smyth
- Professor Ian Wicks
- Professor Ivo Mueller
- Professor Jane Visvader
- Professor Jason Tye-Din
- Professor Jerry Adams
- Professor John Silke
- Professor Ken Shortman
- Professor Leonard C Harrison
- Professor Lynn Corcoran
- Professor Marc Pellegrini
- Professor Melanie Bahlo
- Professor Mike Lawrence
- Professor Nicos Nicola
- Professor Peter Colman
- Professor Peter Gibbs
- Professor Phil Hodgkin
- Professor Stephen Nutt
- Professor Suzanne Cory
- Professor Terry Speed
- Professor Tony Burgess
- Professor Tony Papenfuss
- Professor Warren Alexander
- Diseases
- Education
- PhD
- Honours
- Masters
- Undergraduate
- Student research projects
- 6 cysteine proteins key mediators between malaria parasites and human host
- A balancing act of immunity: autoimmunity versus malignancies
- Activating https://www.wehi.edu.au/node/add/individual-student-research-page#Parkin to treat Parkinson’s disease
- Analysing single cell technologies to understand breast cancer
- Bioinformatics methods for detecting and making sense of somatic genomic rearrangements
- Characterising new regulators in inflammatory signalling pathways
- Computational melanoma genomics
- Control of human lymphocyte cell expansion in complex immune diseases
- Deciphering biophysical changes in red blood cell membrane during malaria parasite infection
- Deciphering the signalling functions of pseudokinases
- Deep profiling of blood cancers during targeted therapy
- Determining the mechanism of type I cytokine receptor triggering
- Differential expression analysis of RNA-seq using multivariate variance modelling
- Discovering new genetic causes of primary antibody deficiencies
- Discovery of novel drug combinations for the treatment of bowel cancer
- Drug targets and compounds that block growth of malaria parasites
- Effects of nutrition on immunity and infection in Asia and Africa
- Enabling deubiquitinase drug discovery
- Epigenetic drivers of immune cell function
- Epigenetic regulation of systemic iron homeostasis
- Exploiting cell death pathways in regulatory T cells for cancer immunotherapy
- Fatal attraction: how apoptotic pore assembly is governed during mitochondrial cell death
- Genomic instability and the immune microenvironment in lung cancer
- How do T lymphocytes decide their fate?
- How the epigenetic regulator SMCHD1 works and how to target it to treat disease
- Human lung protective immunity to tuberculosis: host-environment systems biology
- Human monoclonal antibodies against malaria infection
- Identifying novel treatment options for ovarian carcinosarcoma
- Inflammasome activation in autoinflammatory disease
- Investigating mechanisms of cell death and survival using zebrafish
- Investigating microbial natural products with anti-protozoal activity
- Investigating the role of mutant p53 in cancer
- Investigating the role of platelets in motor neuron disease
- Mapping DNA repair networks in cancer
- Molecular mechanisms controlling embryonic lung progenitor cells
- Nanobodies against malaria
- Neutrophil heterogeneity in inflammation
- New approaches to treat cancer and inflammatory disease using the ubiquitin system
- Next generation CRISPR screens using iPSC
- Novel cell death and inflammatory modulators in lupus
- Programming T cells to defend against infections
- Restraining cytokine-receptor signalling in myeloproliferative neoplasms
- Screening for regulators of jumping genes
- Statistical analysis of genome-wide chromatin organisation using Hi-C
- Statistical analysis of trapped-ion-mobility time-of-flight mass spectrometry proteomics data
- Structure and function of E3 ubiquitin ligases
- Target identification of potent antimalarial agents
- The mitochondrial TOM complex in neurodegenerative disease
- The molecular mechanisms underlying Kir4.1 activity in gliomas
- The role of differential splicing in the genesis of breast cancer
- Uncovering the roles of long non-coding RNAs in human bowel cancer
- Understanding malaria infection dynamics
- Understanding the function of the E3 ligase Parkin in Parkinson’s disease
- Understanding the molecular basis of chromosome instability in gastric cancer
- Utilising pre-clinical models to discover novel therapies for tuberculosis
- School resources
- Frequently asked questions
- Student profiles
- Student achievements
- Student association
- News
- Donate
- Online donation
- Ways to support
- Support outcomes
- Supporter stories
- Rotarians against breast cancer
- A partnership to improve treatments for cancer patients
- 20 years of cancer research support from the Helpman family
- A generous gift from a cancer survivor
- A gift to support excellence in Australian medical research
- An enduring friendship
- Anonymous donor helps bridge the 'valley of death'
- Renewed support for HIV eradication project
- Searching for solutions to muscular dystrophy
- Supporting research into better treatments for colon cancer
- Taking a single cell focus with the DROP-seq
- WEHI.TV
A tribute to Professor Donald Metcalf
AC BSc(Med) MD Syd FRACP HonDSc SydHonMD Oslo HonFRCPath London FRCPA FAA FRS
(26 February 1929 to 15 December 2014)
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility,
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.
King Henry, Henry V (Shakespeare)[1]
Donald Metcalf – Don to most everyone with whom he worked – was a Colossus of science who, working at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and supported by the Cancer Council of Victoria from 1954 to 2014, stood astride the world of haematology (the study of blood cells) for 60 years.
The achievements of Don, the scientist, are legion. Don introduced cancer research to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute at a time when its Director, the Nobel Prize winner Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnet, viewed cancer as an “inevitable disease”, with “anyone who wants to do cancer research, either a fool or a rogue”.
Don politely ignored him.
Studying leukemia in 1964, Don and Ray Bradley, from The University Of Melbourne, discovered it was possible to grow bone marrow cells in plates of partly set agar jelly. Don’s genius lay not in this breakthrough, but in the realisation that it could be used to understand the cellular basis of blood cell production and to discover the hormones, which he named colony-stimulating factors, that regulate blood cell production in the body.
Don worked single-mindedly on this theme for the next 50 years. He characterised blood stem cells and their daughters cells, which are committed to producing the multiple types of white blood cells that fight infection and prevent bleeding. In doing so he made the blood cell system the ‘poster child’ of medical research and shone a light into the darkness for those who followed him to work on understanding other tissues such as the breast, skin and colon.
Don also understood his limitations. Although he was comfortable with cells, he was wary of molecules such as DNA and protein. Nevertheless, Don knew he needed collaborators who would take him out his comfort zone and help him fulfill his ambition of delivering health benefits from his discoveries and so he assembled a team of researchers who worked with him for 40 years. Don’s ability to identify a glimmer of talent in younger researchers and mold them into a cohesive, loyal and vibrant team that consistently came up with ground-breaking discoveries, was remarkable. Decades ahead of its time, his model of collaborative, multidisciplinary science shaped the culture of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and is now seen as almost mandatory if big problems are to be tackled and significant breakthroughs are to be made in medical science.
After two decades of dogged progress, Don and his team succeeded in the Herculean task of isolating four of the blood CSFs, which were present in tiny quantities in the body. Despite Don’s profound fundamental discoveries, which shaped basic understanding of how blood cells are made and work, he always recognised and espoused the responsibility of medical research to help those suffering illness and disease. Isolation and cloning the CSFs paved the way for their mass-production and clinical testing. Don found that injection of the hormones into animals resulted in a rapid increase in the number of blood cells responsible for battling infection and he surmised that they might be used to help cancer patients overcome one of the major side effects of chemotherapy: a loss of white cells and susceptibility to life-threatening infection. Don’s hunch about clinical use was proven true – over the past 20 years, more than 20 million cancer patients, including Spanish tenor Jose Carreras, have been treated with CSFs and, as a result, have been given the best possible chance of beating their cancer. CSFs are now standard treatment and every year the number of people alive because of Don’s work grows. There can be no greater legacy for a medical researcher.
Remarkable though his scientific achievements were – more than 750 scientific papers, 21 patents and receipt of almost every major international prize in medical research, they give only a skeletal outline of the man.
Don was practical – he eschewed the modern trend of senior researchers to move permanently from the laboratory to oversee a large team from the safety of an office. He was a man of scientific action. Many a young researcher was left with ears ringing after a spray from Don that would make John Kennedy senior’s 1971 half-time grand final address to his Hawthorn players (“At least DO SOMETHING! DO! Don't think, don't hope, do!”)seem like polite encouragement.
Don was hard working. He led from the front and expected his team to follow. From the day he entered medical research, until he was diagnosed with cancer four months ago, he would begin work early, between 7.00 am and 7.30 am either doing experiments or writing scientific papers solidly until 5.30 pm; his only compromise being a lunchtime or mid afternoon finish on Saturday. Upon a new recruit starting in his unit, it was mandatory for them to meet with Don who, at least until the mid 1990s, would be smoking a cigar, and would lull you with a question like “have you had a good holiday” - inviting a response like, “yes thank you Professor Metcalf, I have had a lovely two weeks camping at Wilson’s Promontory” - which was then followed by “excellent, that’s the last holiday you will have for three years, get to work”. And it was the last holiday you took, not because Don would stop you taking leave, but because his hard work was infectious and the lab would become your world.
Don was loyal. He was loyal to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute – working there almost continuously for 60 years from 1954 to 2014, despite lucrative offers from all over the world. Don enjoyed the tyranny of distance, which he believed made it easier for Australian scientists to pursue highly original research, away from the latest trends and fads. Don was steadfastly loyal to the four directors, under whom he worked and sometimes disagreed. His attitude approached a US-style respect for the office of the President. Although deeply suspicious and somewhat intolerant of people he called “prancers” or “strutters” once you had proven yourself to be practical, thoughtful, reliable, hardworking and collaborative, you were ‘in’. Being ‘in’ meant a draft of a scientific paper would come back from Don’s office with more red ink than black type. It meant you could be mercilessly interrogated about your science during a seminar or excoriated over some minor antisocial laboratory behavior. Being ‘in’ meant you would be defended to the hilt in front of visitors or other groups. You became part of the team. There was no greater honour.
Don was human - he was no uncaring science machine. He loved banter over afternoon tea, often laughing until tears streamed down his face, at some silly anecdote or remark. He loved an annual week on the Sunshine coast with his wife, which included body surfing, into his late 70s, on waves of any size. He enjoyed a meal and a glass of wine with friends. And more than anything he loved his family - his wife of more than 60 years, Josephine (Jo), his four daughters and his six grandchildren, meant everything to him. He knew, and often publicly acknowledged, that without them he would have achieved little of note.
Other than a bad back, which was exacerbated by endless hours, days, weeks, months and years bent at the microscope, Don enjoyed relative good health until August this year. Feeling under the weather, he went on leave hoping some time away from the laboratory would rejuvenate him. He returned feeling worse and was quickly diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. Knowing the likelihood of cure was not high, his priorities were to undertake some treatment to give him a few extra weeks or months so as to avoid letting down his collaborators and, most importantly, to spend as much time as possible with his beloved Jo and his daughters - but how to do both of these things? The solution for the scientist and family man until the end – have his microscope moved into his home. Don performed his last experiment in October and died surrounded by his family on 15 December 2014. He would have wanted it no other way.
Professor Douglas Hilton,
Director of Walter and Eliza Hall Institute Of Medical Research
Professor Warren Alexander and Professor Nicos Nicola
Heads of Division of Cancer and Haematology, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
[1] This was one of Don’s favorite passages, the other being Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. Don’s autobiography was entitled “Summon up the Blood: In dogged pursuit of the blood cell regulators” (AlphaMed Press, Dayton, Ohio, USA, 2000. ISBN 1-880854-28-7).