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BONE MARROW’S R Dr Sam McCullough (30) is passionate about the potential of using skull bone marrow to treat brain disease and injury. I t was only recently, in 2018, that scientists discovered connections that could allow immune cells from the skull’s bone marrow to travel to the brain. “Bone marrow is an important source of immune cells, so the discovery of a highway connecting bone marrow to the brain creates new possibilities about how bone marrow could be used to treat neurological disease or brain injury.” “Since then, we’ve found that the bone marrow is active in so many different brain diseases – from brain tumours to multiple sclerosis,” Sam says. Sam began his two-year Neurological Foundation fellowship at the University of Auckland’s Centre for Brain Research this year to study the connection between bone marrow and concussion. Using tissue held in the Neurological Foundation Human Brain Bank, his work has already confirmed that after Dr SamMcCullough 14 Headlines