Jerry Adams and Suzanne Cory

Suzanne Cory studied biochemistry at the University of Melbourne and undertook her PhD in Cambridge at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Francis Crick’s division, where she sequenced a methionine transfer RNA.

Jerry Adams studied chemistry at Emory University, Atlanta Georgia, and undertook his PhD at Harvard University with James D Watson, where he showed that bacterial polypeptide chains are initiated by formyl methionyl tRNA. During post-doctoral studies with Fred Sanger at the LMB, he developed procedures to sequence phage RNA as a model messenger RNA and verified the recently proposed universal genetic code.

During postdoctoral work together in Geneva, Adams and Cory began their scientific (and life) partnership, discovering unexpected secondary structure in phage RNA. In 1971, they established their own laboratory at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne, where they still work today. An early major discovery was the modified 5’ ‘caps’ on eukaryotic messenger RNAs. They pioneered recombinant DNA technology in Australia and made signal contributions to both immunogenetics and cancer genetics. They showed that chromosome translocations found in human Burkitt’s lymphomas link the MYC oncogene with immunoglobulin gene loci and developed transgenic mice to directly prove that the MYC translocation caused the malignancy.

In 1988, with PhD student David Vaux, Adams and Cory made the landmark discovery that BCL-2, the putative oncogene activated in follicular lymphoma, promotes cell survival rather than proliferation. Since then, they have focussed on understanding the molecular mechanisms controlling cell life and death and their impact on cancer development and therapy. Cory and Adams were members of the WEHI team that collaborated with Genentech and Abbot Laboratories to help develop the novel highly successful anti-BCL-2 cancer drug venetoclax.

Adams was Joint Head of WEHI’s Molecular Genetics of Cancer Unit/Division for 35 years. Cory was Director of WEHI from 1996 to 2009 and President of the Australian Academy of Science from 2010 to 2014. They have both been elected by their peers into the Australian Academy of Science, Royal Society and US National Academy of Science.