New frontiers: Five innovations changing how we tackle some of our worst brain diseases

Donna Chisholm

New Zealand Listener·

17 Nov, 2025 05:00 PM3 mins to read

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NZ scientists and doctors are at the heart of research and innovation leading to new hope for those with Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s and a range of other neurological conditions. Image / Getty Images

Neuroscientist Richard Faull is retiring after a lifetime in brain research. You can read about his next moves here. Faull was founding director at the Centre for Brain Research at Waipapa Taumata Rau the University of Auckland. Here Donna Chisholm looks at the latest innovations and
research coming out of the centre, and what it will mean to those with brain conditions and diseases.

Turning skin cells into brain cells: The discovery that mature skin cells can be genetically reprogrammed to become stem cells – capable of developing into any tissue of the body – won the Nobel Prize in 2012 and Professor Bronwen Connor, the scientist who heads the Centre for Brain Research’s Neural Reprogramming and Repair Laboratory, says it’s “still very sci-fi in my mind”. Her team has added its own twist to the discovery, adding two genes, SOX2 and PAX6, to the skin cells to create a brain precursor cell. They now use different chemical cues to make different sorts of brain cells – dopamine-producing neurons involved in Parkinson’s disease, the GABA neurons lost in Huntington’s and cortical neurons affected in autism.

Parkinson’s disease: Loss of a sense of smell is “the canary in the coalmine” in Parkinson’s disease, and researchers are investigating the abnormal clumps of protein that develop inside nerve cells, first in the olfactory bulb before migrating further into the brain. It’s hoped that might one day enable the disease to be diagnosed and treated many years before symptoms occur by using tests to measure loss of smell. Professor Maurice Curtis and his team believe the fact clumps occur in the olfactory bulb strengthens the view that environmental factors including toxins, viruses or bacteria might trigger the condition. They are studying tissue from about 120 patients and matching it with their medical records to find out what other conditions they may have suffered in their lives, including colds, flu and in particular hypertension, to see if they are linked to an increased risk of Parkinson’s.

Huntington’s: Huntington’s research has long been a key focus of geneticist Professor Russell Snell at the centre, where scientists are about to test a gene-editing treatment to prevent the disease.

The aim is to deactivate the mutation in a flock of sheep specially bred by the centre. Knocking out or deactivating certain genes also has promise in other brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease and muscular dystrophy.

The centre’s new state-of-the-art autism clinic is also looking at identifying genetic variants that have a role in the condition, and will link those diagnoses with personalised care and support.

Cell therapy trial: The centre’s researchers and clinicians have just begun a clinical trial of a new gene therapy to “slow down and change” the genetic mutation that produces Huntington’s disease, in a collaboration with American biotech company Skyhawk Therapeutics.

30 patients with the gene will be enrolled in the two-year study, with trial sites in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The treatment involves taking a daily oral tablet, which investigators say is a huge step forward – until now, most treatments have required spinal injections or infusions.

Novel treatments: Brain and brain cancer cells grown at the centre’s Hugh Green Biobank, led by Professor Mike Dragunow, for the above diseases are also being used in the search for treatments for glioblastoma brain cancer. Cells from patients and those who have donated their brains to research are used for screening the potential new therapies.

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