DOCUMENT

Dr Bronwyn Kivell: A neurological researcher to watch Bronwyn’s research interests include anti-addiction pharmacotherapies, drug abuse, non-addictive pain medications, the immunomodulatory effects of kappa opioids and evaluating novel remyelination drugs for the treatment of multiple sclerosis. Her dedication to finding better solutions to sometimes unpopular problems is both admirable and important. Bronwyn’s journey Bronwyn arrived in the neurological research field in a roundabout way. As a teenager growing up in a small country town, she was always interested in biology and this led her to study physiology and zoology at Massey University. After gaining her bachelor’s degree, financial necessity declared it was time to get a job. “I was lucky enough to land a job at Victoria University as a physiology technician. It was full-time, but I also managed to study part-time doing papers for my masters and carry out research projects studying the developmental expression of opioid receptors. As a technician, I was working with Professor John Miller. He was also my supervisor for my masters.” “I was about to hand in my master’s thesis when John said ‘why don’t you do a PhD?’. At first I thought it was a no-go, because taking five to six years off work to be a student simply wasn’t viable, but then John pointed out that I could convert my masters work and significantly shorten the journey to the doctorate. It was the best decision I ever made.” For her PhD, Bronwyn researched the developmental expression of various opioid receptors. With a view to finding data that’s relevant to cot death and other respiratory problems, she looked at different areas of the brain stem and how opioid receptors are expressed in the brain during foetal and postnatal development. With her PhD done and dusted, Bronwyn headed to the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Baltimore as a postdoctoral research fellow working on kappa opioid receptor and monoamine transporter signalling pathways. There she joined the laboratory of Dr Toni Shippenberg. “Toni was head of the lab looking at addiction behaviour and the cellular effects of addiction. At the time, she was one of the world experts on the kappa opioid receptor. In the USA I also met my collaborator Tom Prisinzano. I’ve been working with him now for more than 10 years.” An Associate Professor in physiology and neurobiology at Victoria University Wellington’s School of Biological Sciences, Dr Bronwyn Kivell has a long-standing relationship with the Neurological Foundation. 18 Headlines