DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY TO REPLACE NEURONS LOST TO ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE WITH NEURAL PRECURSOR CELLS DERIVED FROM SKIN CELLS
With
Professor Michael Valenzuela,
Founder and Chief Scientific Officer,
Skin2Neuron
PEOPLE IN HEALTH CARE SEGMENT
Filmed in Sydney | June 2026
Professor Michael Valenzuela is a science opinion leader, innovator and creative thinker with a career-long commitment to the prevention and treatment of dementia.
He studied psychology at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) before completing a PhD on Cognitive Reserve. This work was recognised by one of the nation’s top awards, the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Medical Research.
Following that he completed graduate medicine and medical training at the Prince of Wales Hospital. In 2012, he established the Regenerative Neuroscience Group at the University of Sydney, and in 2017 became the university’s first Professor of Regenerative Medicine.
Professor Valenzuela’s group discovered a new cell type with potential for regenerative medicine, a rare neural precursor cell found deep within the human hair follicle. He is the main inventor on several related patents and is the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Skin2Neuron – a biotech company developing the first neurorestorative cell therapy for Alzheimer’s disease based on this work.
Between 2019-2021 he was employed as a senior advisor to the WHO in one of its flagship Decade of Healthy Ageing initiatives. He also joined the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing at UNSW as Visiting Professor and played a leading role in the design and successful completion of the Maintain Your Brain – the world’s largest dementia prevention trial that found it is possible to delay cognitive decline in older at-risk people by about 1-year.
Professor Valenzuela is a frequent media commentator and author of the popular science book Maintain Your Brain.
Source: Supplied
-
Empowering underprivileged communities with sustainable health
Dr Gaj Panagoda, CEO of Xstitch Health, has a diverse medical background and is working to improve health systems for underprivileged communities. In the Australian Health Journal’s People In Health Care series, he talks about the changes needed in community-based care using a project based approach,
According to Dr Panagoda, there is a need for a shift towards community-based care and collaboration with stakeholders in the healthcare system, and the potential to create a new kind of socially conscious, inspired, community-informed medical specialist is the future of medical specialty care.
-
Significant funding announced for NSW biomedical researchers
The Snow Medical Research Foundation (Snow Medical) has announced a new $24 million investment in three outstanding Australian biomedical researchers through its prestigious Snow Fellowships.
These Fellows will tackle major global health challenges spanning autoimmune disease, neurological disorders, and genetic disease. Their work addresses conditions that disproportionately affect vulnerable and underserved populations, including First Nations communities, while advancing precision medicine and translational care. Collectively, their research aims to deliver safer vaccines, better diagnostics, and more equitable genomic and neurological healthcare.
-
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite on patient safety and health systems improvement
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite is Founding Director of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Director of the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science and Professor of Health Systems Research at Macquarie University.
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite is a leading health services and systems researcher with an international reputation for his work investigating and contributing to systems improvement.
The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association (AHHA) recently announced it will award the 2021 Sidney Sax medal for outstanding contributions to the development and improvement of Australia’s healthcare system to Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite.
