Ann Richmond's laboratory gains new insights into tumor growth and wound healing through studies of the "SOS gene"

Allison Byrum/Intern
Jan. 28, 2001

A soda clerk turned chemistry teacher and a developmental biologist with the reputation as one of the toughest and best members of his department are among the role models that have guided Ann Richmond in her career as a successful cancer researcher.

As a schoolgirl growing up in a small town in Arkansas, Richmond relished challenging subjects. For that reason, she found science interesting, but it didn’t occur to her that it could be a career. There was one chemistry teacher, Mrs. Luke, who succeeded in fascinating Richmond in quantum theory and other aspects of the world of atoms and molecules. Despite a longtime interest in science, Mrs. Luke came to science teaching late in life. For many years, she was content to work behind the counter of the local soda fountain. But then a change in her family situation prompted her to get a teaching certificate and begin teaching chemistry at the local high school.

Richmond recalls Mrs. Luke’s classes as the first science instruction that she truly enjoyed. The experience convinced her to minor in science when she earned her teaching degree in college. After she began teaching, Richmond realized that earning a master’s degree in chemistry would be good for her career. So she signed up. While studying for her master’s, she found that she really enjoyed research and so decided to get a doctorate.

"I liked science because it was challenging," Richmond recalls. "I always liked the classes that were the most difficult!"

Given her penchant for challenges, it wasn’t surprising that Richmond chose one of the toughest mentors in the department of developmental biology at Emory University as her doctoral adviser. Professor Bill Elmer had a reputation as one of the toughest and one of the best, she recalls. Richmond remembers his interactive style in the lab as well as his effective teaching techniques. "He was probably the most influential role model I had during my early scientific career."

As she has continued to grow and mature as a scientist, however, Richmond has not limited her role models to Elmer and Mrs. Luke. "I have developed a collage of role models, based on many different men and women who have helped shape my scientific career, whom I have watched and learned from."

By the time Richmond was a postdoctoral fellow and beginning her work on MGSA, she was 33 years old with two small children. Lab life with its long hours and difficult problems was tough, but Richmond thrived on the challenge. She describes a scientific career as something of a roller coaster. At some points, the ride is fast and hard, but, at other points, the trip goes a little slower so that one can focus her time and energy on other important things.

In the beginning years of the MGSA project, however, Richmond’s life seemed stuck on a fast and hard stretch. The research and the research conditions were challenging. Richmond spent many late nights in the library and the lab working on the MGSA puzzle. Part of her job was interviewing melanoma patients, and those experiences constantly refueled her. Each interview personalized the problem once again. Many of the patients were the same age as Richmond and in similar situations. Many were young mothers whose lives seemed interchangeable with her own.

Two patients in particular made a lasting impression. One was a young mother of two whose illness progressed with startling rapidity. The woman was healthy enough to run the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta in July but died from melanoma in December. Richmond was particularly touched by the woman’s story and the fate of her small children. The other was an older lady, whose disease had spread to her lungs. Richmond spent an entire evening talking with her. "She was warm and kind," Richmond recalls, "The doctors said she had a bad case of the ‘oh-my-lord’s,’ meaning that not only her body, but her will was tired of fighting the melanoma." Richmond left the patient that evening and when she returned to work the next morning she learned that the woman had passed away during the night. Richmond’s job was then to extract tumor tissue during the autopsy. When she saw the woman’s body, she fainted. "It hit me that one day someone will be there and the next day she won’t," she recalls.

"These patients lit a flame," Richmond explains, "one that would not go out and could not be ignored." Richmond relied on the stories of the people with whom she had talked for encouragement when the research became difficult. Late at night, often with her girls asleep beside her, memories of the men and women she had met who were fighting for their lives drove her to finish just one more experiment on the borrowed equipment.

"I’ve never been a researcher without emotion," Richmond says.