CYNDI SHANNON WEICKERT
NEUROSCIENCE Following her twin brother’s diagnosis, Professor Shannon Weickert has dedicated her life to understanding schizophrenia.
Professor Cyndi Shannon Weickert was just 16 when her twin brother began to change. Previously bright and sociable, Scott Shannon wanted to quit school, and he increasingly retreated into his bedroom at home. Then he started “receiving special messages”.
One night he told Cyndi, “You’re not my sister. You’re the daughter of the devil.” Another time, he pushed their mother against the wall and tried to choke her. After this episode, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia – an illness that “nobody would even talk about back in the ’80s,” Professor Shannon Weickert says. “It was really shocking and embarrassing”.
But her brother’s condition also set her on a career that has spanned three decades and spawned some of the most significant breakthroughs in schizophrenia research. “I felt very
frustrated,” she says. “He was talented in school and had his whole life ahead of him – but you find out there isn’t anything acceptable that can be done.”
With an aptitude for biology and analysis, Professor Shannon Weickert figured a cure for schizophrenia would lie in understanding the biology of the disease. “I thought, ‘I’ll get into that, fix this problem, then I’ll get on with the rest of my life,’” she says. “That’s how naïve I was. I didn’t realise how difficult it was going to be.”
She received a degree in biology and psychology from a local college. Then, knowing that medical options for schizophrenia were limited, she decided to move into research. So her next stop was New York City, to study brain development at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She believed that something must have changed in her brother’s brain during adolescence, causing the withdrawal, anxiety and hallucinations of his illness.
She got more than she bargained for. “I not only picked up a PhD, but I picked up a husband,” she says with a laugh. Together, they moved to the US National Institutes of Health in Maryland, where she focused on schizophrenia research. Twelve years ago, they made the move Down Under.
Professor Shannon Weickert is now working at Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) in Sydney. Last year, her team made a groundbreaking discovery – that immune cells in the brains of people with schizophrenia
“If one door closes, you’ve got to bang on another one.”
were actually causing inflammation and harming brain tissue. “I think the immune system gets a little rogue,” she explains, “almost like you would see in an autoimmune disease.”
This discovery could transform the landscape of schizophrenia research and management. But it may not have happened. Four years ago, Professor Shannon Weickert’s brother passed away from complications relating to his anti-psychotic medication, and she questioned whether she should even go on. “I was devastated,” she says. “I thought, well I’m never going to be able to fix him and that’s what I was going in there to do.”
It was concern for others that kept her going. “All the patients, the carers, the scientists – I just didn’t want to let them down. It’s a much bigger problem than your brother or your relatives. It’s been a problem for humankind for as long as written history.”
And while her career has had other challenges – like lack of funding and failed experiments – she has still persisted. “If one door closes, you’ve got to bang on another one,” she says.
There are also thrills, including the joy of “figuring something out for the first time, and realising that this is really important. It’s really a privilege to be at the cutting edge of discovery”.
But her ultimate career moment was giving a plenary address about her findings – something she has aspired to for years.
“You see people up there whom you admire [when] you go there as a post-doc fresh out of graduate school, and you think, ‘Wow, they know so much,’” she states. “Then you realise that that’s you – you are delivering a lecture on something that people are tweeting about. You’re in a position to change the field – and people’s lives – because of what you say up there on the podium.”
In addition to making discoveries, she loves working with her students, sometimes inviting them to her home in New York state – where she spends a few months each year visiting her mother and working in her US lab.
As for the future, she is optimistic about finding a cure for at least some forms of schizophrenia in her lifetime. And while research progress can seem slow, she urges people with mental health conditions to remain hopeful.
“It’s like being on a long flight from the US to Australia,” she says. “It feels like forever, but we’re preparing for the descent. I think an answer is on the horizon.”