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