125 stories for 125 years

Anne Tonti-Filippini

Anne Tonti-Filippini (nee Catarinich) graduated with a Bachelor of Pharmacy in 1969 and completed her Master of Pharmacy in 1973. She was a tutor/demonstrator in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the college from 1972 to 1978 and conducted research with Geoff Vaughan during that time. She worked at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne before moving to Perth in 1984. In Perth she worked as an oncology pharmacist at Mount Hospital, the first private hospital to have a cytotoxic suite. She is now Clinical Trials Pharmacist at Fremantle Hospital and remembers the college fondly.

"The college sets a very high standard. In terms of innovation; it was always ahead of everyone else, especially when cooperating with industry. I still have very fond memories of the 'College of Knowledge', as we facetiously called it. When I visited Melbourne last year I was very surprised to see that construction was only just starting to happen on the vacant block adjacent to the Manning building. They were talking more than 30 years ago about building an Institute of Drug Technology there!

"Does anyone remember the Great Fire? It happened while I was a staffer in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the early '70s – it was either 1972 or 1973. All the undergraduates were, fortunately, in the lecture block. The fire was in the new Manning building and totally destroyed one of the chemistry research labs. Geoff Vaughan would remember it – he kicked us all out and tackled it single-handed, as only Geoff could do, until it became apparent that it was out of control. Fortunately nobody was seriously injured. Meanwhile, the students were sauntering out of the lecture theatres, thinking it was just another fire drill. Eventually the fire brigade arrived and the students realised, with some excitement, that it was a real situation! They rejoiced when they learnt that chemistry prac classes would be cancelled for several weeks while all the chemicals were cleaned up and the toxic fumes cleared.

"I enjoy being the Clinical Trials Pharmacist at Fremantle Hospital. There are so many new insights into disease and its treatment. We have about 55 current trials running here. Seven new ones have started in the last three months, so I've had reams of protocols to read and sterile procedures to set up. There is plenty of variety – oncology/haematology, cardiology, gastroenterology, renal and infectious diseases. I still miss chemistry prac though. The nearest I've got was doing an Unsealed Radioisotope Handling Course so that I could become more involved in the nuclear medicine trials. These are run by Professor Harvey Turner, who is chairman of the World Radiopharmaceutical Therapy Council. I am hoping that we will have radiopharmacy introduced into the pharmacy courses here in WA in the near future."