Emeritus Professor Anna Wirz-Justice Media Resource

Q&A

  1. How did you begin your career in research?

My generation was not mentored for a career in research, we had to invent ourselves and our identity as women scientists. So one studied, and if one didn’t get married, one continued studying, and somewhere along the way the fire of curiosity was kindled. A chance encounter deflected my subject of research from the biosynthesis of terpenes in a tiny weed to looking at metabolites in the urine of schizophrenic patients, seeking a clue to endogenous hallucinogenic substances. From one weird subject to another! That was Paris 68 so I actually didn’t do very much except demonstrate on the streets. Moving to Basel I found a job in a psychiatric clinic (where I stayed forever) and started looking at metabolities in the plasma of depressive patients, seeking a clue to mood disorders. So from organic chemistry I suddenly switched to psychiatric neurobiology, a field that fascinated me for the rest of my career. Message? Take your chances, do not fear trying out something different!

  1. What motivated you to become a sleep researcher?

I fell into sleep and rhythms research backwards. By trying to make sure my biochemical assays were reliable before investigating patients, I had started looking at factors that could influence them: time of day, gender, menstrual cycle, season, and discovered that these changes were far greater than the any difference between a given group of controls and depressives. So I became more interested in the natural patterns of the 24-hour day-night cycle, the influence of sleep, light and dark. To try and understand the sleep and mood disturbances in affective disorders one had to understand basic circadian physiology. The first really paradigmatic papers on the circadian system were published at this time. And together with the observation of remarkable improvement in major depression after a single night’s sleep deprivation, we were inspired to develop conceptual models of sleep regulation and mood that provided a framework for a great deal of future research. Message? Follow your curiosity and listen to the data! A single patient can yield clues to a new treatment!

  1. To what do you attribute your success in research?

I was fortunate to be involved in the exciting early days of modern rhythm and sleep research, and worked with many outstanding pioneers. We were unfettered by our predecessors and bold in our scope, concepts were primary and experiments theory-driven – and we didn’t have to spend half of our time writing grants as is the case today. If we had an idea - we tried it out. It was not a sinecure to be a female PhD in a medical environment in Switzerland, but my feminist kiwi stubbornness kept me pushing the boundaries. Message? Don’t forget that ideas are the key to any research endeavour! Give them space and time to unfold!

  1. How did you establish your trans-disciplinary interactions, and how has this accelerated translation of your research?

In chronobiology, it is natural to think across phyla, and from behaviour to genes, since circadian rhythms share similar mechanisms in unicellular organisms to humans. Thus our field is naturally interdisciplinary, and crosses the usual boundaries. Even if I only worked with hamsters, rats and humans, I used different techniques - from rest-activity cycle measurement to neurotransmitter receptor function to disk-shedding in the retina. Isn’t it obvious – that you can only profit and go further by working with expert colleagues in other fields, learn new methods and expand conceptual boundaries – to attain more profound insight into the questions? Doesn’t everybody do that? A paradigmatic example of this was the discovery of how seasonal rhythms of reproduction and hibernation in hamsters was triggered by daylength, transduced by the hormonal signal of nocturnal melatonin secretion – and lead to light therapy for winter depression - the first treatment in psychiatry evolving out of basic research.

  1. If you had political power, what changes would you make to strengthen, support and facilitate your research?

There are the important factors of stable funding, investment in new areas, supporting young researchers and particularly facilitating women to be able to combine career with family (and supporting men who have the same ambitions of a balanced life). Programmes to support non-linear but promising/successful careers would be helpful. In this highly competitive system today where one has to spend too much time writing grants and reporting on them, selecting key researchers at a point in their career where they are ready to take off, and giving them 5 years of stability to get on with the work, may be vital seeding that permits more significant findings than spread-out shorter grants. Encouraging networks for synergy with special funding would lead to virtual centres of excellence. And – after the years of postdoc wandering, are there enough jobs for the highly qualified next generation in research? So that all this training and support are not lost to the scientific community?

  1. What do they do differently in Switzerland compared to Australia, to support their health and medical research sector?

I am not qualified to do a political comparison, but given that Switzerland has no natural resources like Australia, there is a very conscious awareness and commitment to education, research and development as being the solid ore of our success. We mine brains. Thus, scientific and medical research has a huge priority and funding is not only stable but growing. The motto of the Swiss National Science Foundation is “knowledge is the key to the future. Research creates knowledge.” The long-term strategy for promoting research in Switzerland is dedicated to advancing international integration, communicating research results to the public, and showing how research contributes to social progress, economic growth and a high quality of life. We encourage public debate on the opportunities and limitations of science, contribute to the solution of important current problems through research programmes and centres of competence, and invest in researchers and their ideas. Actually, doesn’t this sound like exactly what the Australian health and medical research bodies are doing? As everywhere, in the face of soaring medical health costs, the important political strategy must remain holding on to stable and even growing funding for biomedical research: this is the key to future well-being in every society.

7. What is the most important piece of advice you would give to young researchers at the beginning of their careers?

Choose your mentor carefully. Observe this person’s collaborative network and check out the vibes in the lab. There’s a lot of tough competition today, and a tendency to be secretive and aggressive as the required style for success (that yearned for publication in Nature for example). In the long run, however, finding good colleagues, establishing trust, and sharing ideas will yield more solid work and more satisfaction. My motto has always been: science is done between friends! Happy people work better!

Dr. Anna Wirz-Justice

Anna Wirz-Justice is emeritus Professor and Research Fellow at the Centre for Chronobiology, Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel.

Born in Christchurch, NZ she received a PhD in Organic Chemistry from University College London. Anna initially worked on circadian rhythms in animals and the effects of psychiatric medications on neurotransmitter receptor and rest-activity rhythms. During a fellowship at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, she and Thomas Wehr, MD carried out the first sleep phase advance experiment in a bipolar patient. Anna introduced light therapy to Europe, followed up with more than 20 years of research on seasonal affective disorder and light therapy.

Anna is a former president of the Society for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms. A prestigious Anna-Monika-Prize with Thomas Wehr recognised their seminal work in the chronobiology of depressive illness. In 2002, she received the Scholar's Prize of the City of Basel, awarded for outstanding scientific career achievement.

She has also worked with artists, architects and designers who are inspired by the complexities of neuroscience. Collaborations include Phillippe Rahm’s “Light Room” at the Swiss Pavillion in the 2002 Venice Biennale, and light installations by Andreas Horlitz using chronobiological images. Her work has inspired the incorporation of novel lighting regimens in architecture to improve sleep, mood and cognition in Alzheimer’s patients.

Anna is director of CET's Chronotherapeutics Consultants, formed in 2004 to advise hospital psychiatrists on the implementation of light and wake therapies as adjuncts to drug treatment of major depression. Most recently, she lead a team including Francesco Benedetti and Michael Terman to the field's first treatment manual for clinicians, Chronotherapeutics for Affective Disorders.