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Neurological Foundation of New Zealand In 2022, she began a three-year project, supported by the Neurological Foundation, to use this technique to help solve a long-standing mystery about Huntington’s disease (HD). Using skin cells from people with HD, she will reprogramme them into brain cells to look at why some neurons are selectively killed by the disease, while others are not. The neurons that are not harmed might hold clues about how to safeguard the brain from the disease. Dr Amy McCaughey-Chapman is an emerging neuroscientist working with Bronwen on the project, adding her expertise in cell programming – the step-by-step process of transforming live skin cells into brain cells. USING CELLS TO SOLVE MYSTERIES Professor BronwenConnor is known internationally for pioneering a unique method to create brain cells in a labusing skin cells frompeoplewith neurological diseases. “I often think research is like a puzzle. Every piece is crucial to the perfect assembly of the overall picture, and every experiment is like finding another piece that fits. Eventually, all of those pieceswill come together to reach the overall goal of our research.” Dr Amy McCaughey-Chapman, CatWalk Trust Research Fellow, Department of Pharmacology, University of Auckland