Not long ago, Bronwen had a crazy idea and decided to follow it, leading her team to be first in the world to see a brain cell grown from a skin cell.
To do this they devised a technique called direct reprogramming which forces genes into skin cells to make them behave like, and eventually turn into, healthy brain cells.

This has radical potential for understanding for the first time how normal and diseased brain cells differ, thereby understanding what is needed to cure neurological diseases.




The future of medicine has reached new heights with scientists now able to take mature human skin cells and “reprogram” them back to stem cells.

Neuroscientist, Associate Professor Bronwen Connor is based at the Centre for Brain Research at The University of Auckland.
Her novel, ground-breaking work involves the direct reprogramming of adult human skin cells to brain stem cells which can then be grown into any type of mature brain cell.

Her technique is unique in that it uses adult human tissue negating the use of embryonic stem cells and the ethical issues
associated with their use and allows the use of a patients own skin cells to generate the brain stem cells, removing issues of rejection.

This innovative technology also allows researchers to generate human brain cells from patients with neurological disorders, such as Parkinsons or Autism, to gain a better understanding of the cause of these disorders.



This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx