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
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CASE STUDY: Creating awareness, workforce education & dissemination strategy in national screening
At the recent Screening Conference 2025 in Sydney, hosted by Public Health Association, Dr Rachael Dodd, Senior Research Fellow at The Daffodil Centre, spoke about the information and educational resources created to increase awareness in the healthcare workforce and community on the upcoming Australia’s National Lung Cancer Screening Program commencing in July 2025.
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ICTD: Clinical trials in regional, rural and remote Australia
To mark International Clinical Trials Day 2026, Australian Health Journal commences a 4 part special series leaving up to 20th May. Through conversations with leading researchers, clinicians and trial organisations, the series highlights achievements in the year that was for clinical trials. The first segment is an example of how in-person clinical trial access has improved for regional, rural and remote communities.
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Clinical pain neuroscientist talks about how the brain processes pain information
Persistent pain affects one in five Australians and costs the nation an estimated $73 billion per year in health system costs, lost productivity and other financial costs.
Persistent pain also has debilitating personal costs – negatively impacting quality of life and the ability to engage in meaningful work and life activities.
Despite the enormity of this problem, very few effective treatments exist with most showing only small to moderate improvements. New treatments are desperately needed. The group believes the best way to create impactful change is to work with people with lived experience of persistent pain to devise solutions with them, not for them.
