Opera or medicine? When Catherine Bollard stood at that crossroads of her career, that was the question in front of her. Despite her love of opera and a family populated with artists and performers, life experiences drew her down the path of medicine. As the Interim Senior Vice president and Chief Research Officer at Children’s National Hospital, her work in immunology and immunotherapy develops cell and gene therapies in the pediatric and adult cancer spaces.
What’s your story?
I was born and raised in New Zealand. Even at a young age, I knew I wanted to get into healthcare in some way. The idea was always there in the background. In my final year of high school, my dear, dear friend, Diana, developed infectious mononucleosis, which is cause by the Epstein Barr virus, or EBV. Within six months, she developed an EBV associated Hodgkin’s lymphoma. We had made plans to go to medical school together, which were derailed for her. She had to get chemo and radiation and was one of the first people in New Zealand to have an autologous stem cell transplant.
After years of treatment, she went into remission and by then, decided she wasn’t going to medical school. She fell in love and moved to Boston with her new husband. I was engaged to a musician and we decided we would go to England to seek fame and fortune. On the way, we stopped in Boston to visit her and she told me she had developed myelodysplastic syndrome, a pre-leukemia condition, which was caused by her chemo and radiation treatments. She died very quickly after that, of acute myeloid leukemia.
By this time, my fiancé (now he’s my husband and we’re celebrating our 30th anniversary this month) were living in England, both pursuing musical careers and I was also working in a hospital in a pediatric cancer ward, because — reality check — we needed the income. And I loved it. Finally, my singing teacher told me it was time to make a choice: music or medicine. It was a hard choice to make, but I knew pediatric oncology was the right choice for me and I’m so glad I chose that path.
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
The work I do to develop new treatment therapies for cancer patients. Absolutely.
After completing my boards, I told my mentor I wanted to work in immunotherapy. I wanted to train the immune system to kill the cancer cells and not the healthy cells. Immunotherapy wasn’t even a thing then. A friend from medical school was working at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor and I received a grant to go work there. Originally, I was told I’d be working on a vaccine for children with neuroblastoma, but when I got there, they told me that project was closed, but they had one developing a treatment for EBV positive Hodgkin lymphoma. And so, I got to work on a team developing therapies for the disease that took my dear Diana.
Now I’m at Children’s National developing novel cell therapies and training the next generation of pediatric oncologists and I can’t think of anything that could be more exciting. This work is my mission.
What is that one book that has influenced you the most?
The one that comes to mind immediately is Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer). It’s about a failed expedition to climb Mt. Everest, led by a New Zealander, so there’s that connection. What has really stayed with me is this is a story about testing the limits of where we, as individuals, will go versus as a team. It’s about being humbled by nature. Not only did this book make me feel hypoxic, it made me realize some of the reasons we push ourselves and recognizing our limits.
The other book I think everyone should read is The Emperor of All Maladies. It made a big impact on me. It shows you how far we’ve come in such a short time, in cancer treatment and research, especially in cell therapy. It’s a fascinating book.
You and your work have made a difference for many patients. Is there one patient who made a difference for you?
One of my patients was a young guy who was on the US Ski Team and training in New Zealand. He was complaining that he was hot and sweaty while all of his teammates were freezing. That’s one of the symptoms of Hodgkin’s lymphoma and he was diagnosed while in New Zealand. After traditional treatment — chemo and radiation — he came to me and told me his only options were palliative care or trying immune therapy. Keep in mind, he was a very fit, healthy-looking 24-year-old guy.
I told him, “We’ve never given this treatment to anybody and we don’t know what the side effects are.” And he said, “I’m doing it.” I gave him his first injection in 2000.
He is still alive. He’s in complete remission and he’s now got a wee baby. He’s my Facebook friend, so I get to see him living his life. It’s amazing.
Another patient is a woman who is very close to my age. She had no other therapeutic options and took the risk. Well over a decade later she’s alive and well. She sends me Christmas cards every year. One of her daughters is a doctor. Seeing her family being able to grow up with their mother brings me such joy.
What is the most interesting thing we should know about you?
Deep down, I am an artist. I come from a very musical family, so becoming a musician was probably the more predictable path for me. I had this passion for singing and I still do. Singing is a great release and an opportunity to decompress.
Many people say medicine is an art, and there is merit to that. I think the artistic part of being a physician scientist is learning from patients and taking that knowledge to the bench, fine tuning the lesson, and then bringing it back to the clinic. There’s a certain musicality to that — the cadence, the rhythm. It’s full circle for me.
