Carolyn Corlies Compton

Carolyn Corlies Compton McGill University

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McGill Reporter
January 25, 2001 - Volume 33 Number 09
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Carolyn Corlies Compton

"You want to become a pathologist? Wonderful. I'll turn you into a GI (gastrointestinal) pathologist. You can work in my lab while you're doing your residency."

Photo PHOTO: Owen Egan

Carolyn Corlies Compton kisses the potential recruit on both cheeks. Dr. Compton is the McGill University Health Centre's new pathologist-in-chief and she's thrilled to find anyone interested in doing what she loves doing: pathology.

A two-time winner of the Harvard Medical School's Faculty Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the vivacious, fashionably dressed Compton tells a visiting journalist that the student's interest in joining her team "is music to my ears."

Compton is hungry for new blood in pathology, a department that, in her view, has been neglected and needs a change of image if it's going to attract young physicians and scientists.

"People think pathologists pull bodies out of rivers," she says, laughing. "And pickled organs in bottles don't help. That's not what modern pathology is about."

If you happen to enter the Duff Building from Pine Avenue, pickled organs are just what you stumble upon in the basement corridor. Compton, who has been at Harvard Medical School for the past 15 years, was hired to change all that.

Already, blueprints for the renovation of the aged building clutter her long meeting table, along with a pot of waning tulips, a microscope and sheets of slides.

"A physical renovation of the building will help with recruiting. I'm very American in this way," says the native Philadelphian. "It's all in the packaging -- as long as the content is there."

Compton learned that the MUHC was looking for a new chief when her husband, a graduate of McGill's Faculty of Medicine, was in Montreal for a reunion. She was already mulling over a few possibilities in the States, but none really grabbed her. McGill's Dean of Medicine Abe Fuks asked her to apply here.

What attracted Compton to McGill was the fact that here was a world-renowned medical school with a neglected department in need of rejuvenation. "I'm at a point in my career where I can be a leader. But in the U.S., there's very little in the way of leadership positions in my field, unless you're doing only science. There's virtually none in medicine."

Compton, who has an MD degree and a PhD, is both a scientist and a physician. "I'd like to train people to do both," she says, adding that, "pathology is perfectly poised to be at the interface between science and medicine.

"The role of the pathologist is to diagnose from the morphology of tissue," she explains.

"The mantra in cancer, for instance, is 'no meat, no treat.'" In other words, it takes a pathologist, not "the lab," to examine all those biopsies of possible tumours before a surgeon or oncologist will decide on the course of treatment.

Compton's dream for pathology at McGill is to "change medicine for the better.

"I want to facilitate finding new ways of diagnosing diseases, predicting outcomes and finding targets for new drug therapies. And we're uniquely placed to do this because we control tissue."

Compton's own specialization deals with diseases of the gastrointestinal system, such as cancer of the colon and pancreas. But her talents extend to other areas as well.

While director of GI pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Compton also served as pathologist-in-chief at the burn unit of Shriner's Hospital, where she directed a research lab for the cultivation of new skin. Her work put her on the front page of People magazine in 1984 when the still-experimental skin saved the lives of two children destined to die of their burns. She continues her research in the area of skin grafts and wound-healing.

Compton says that McGill has an advantage in recruiting new talent over richer, deeper universities down south.

"A wealthy institution can't attract people if it has no place to put them. Here, on the other hand, I have space and the mandate to build and recruit people of my own choosing. That was really attractive."

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