{"id":141356,"date":"2025-11-18T15:10:38","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T15:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/141356\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T15:10:38","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T15:10:38","slug":"new-frontiers-five-innovations-changing-how-we-tackle-some-of-our-worst-brain-diseases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/141356\/","title":{"rendered":"New frontiers: Five innovations changing how we tackle some of our worst brain diseases"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donna Chisholm<\/p>\n

New Zealand Listener\u00b7<\/p>\n

17 Nov, 2025 05:00 PM3 mins to read<\/p>\n

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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<\/p>\n

\n Neuroscientist Richard Faull is retiring after a lifetime in brain research. You can read about his next moves here<\/a>. 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
\n research coming out of the centre, and what it will mean to those with brain conditions and diseases.\n <\/p>\n

Turning skin cells into brain cells: The discovery that mature skin cells can be genetically reprogrammed to become stem cells \u2013 capable of developing into any tissue of the body \u2013 won the Nobel Prize in 2012 and Professor Bronwen Connor, the scientist who heads the Centre for Brain Research\u2019s Neural Reprogramming and Repair Laboratory, says it\u2019s \u201cstill very sci-fi in my mind\u201d. 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 \u2013 dopamine-producing neurons involved in Parkinson\u2019s disease, the GABA neurons lost in Huntington\u2019s and cortical neurons affected in autism.<\/p>\n

Parkinson\u2019s disease: Loss of a sense of smell is \u201cthe canary in the coalmine\u201d in Parkinson\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Huntington\u2019s: Huntington\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s, Parkinson\u2019s, motor neurone disease and muscular dystrophy. <\/p>\n

The centre\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Cell therapy trial: The centre\u2019s researchers and clinicians have just begun a clinical trial of a new gene therapy to \u201cslow down and change\u201d the genetic mutation that produces Huntington\u2019s disease, in a collaboration with American biotech company Skyhawk Therapeutics. <\/p>\n

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 \u2013 until now, most treatments have required spinal injections or infusions.<\/p>\n

Novel treatments: Brain and brain cancer cells grown at the centre\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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Copy LinkEmailFacebookTwitter\/XLinkedInReddit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donna Chisholm New Zealand Listener\u00b7 17 Nov, 2025 05:00 PM3 mins to read Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1443,74,51,1596,1550,14229,95864,24004,8278,3936,4701,4130,95863,1342,63826,37145,134,191,221,68060,700,6453,663,29391,8599,94713,117,111,139,1536,69,1118,22213,15403,1518,8667,15160,544,40865,38959,7563,1528,38958,3270,6923,1533,102,8598],"class_list":["post-141356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-about","tag-after","tag-auckland","tag-brain","tag-centre","tag-changing","tag-chisholm","tag-coming","tag-conditions","tag-director","tag-diseases","tag-donna","tag-faull","tag-five","tag-founding","tag-frontiers","tag-health","tag-here","tag-how","tag-innovations","tag-latest","tag-lifetime","tag-looks","tag-mean","tag-moves","tag-neuroscientist","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-our","tag-read","tag-research","tag-retiring","tag-richard","tag-some","tag-tackle","tag-taumata","tag-those","tag-university","tag-waipapa","tag-we","tag-what","tag-will","tag-with","tag-worst"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}