Agnete Kirkeby, PhD

Dr Kirkeby has many years of expertise in generating accurately regionalised human neural cells from pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) and has been responsible for the preclinical development of the first European hPSC-derived dopamine cell therapy for treatment of Parkinson's Disease - the STEM-PD product. This product is now in clinical trial in Sweden and the UK and the team has reported initial safety and graft survival in preclinical development, the group is further performing in vivo testing of a novel cholinergic neuron product, showing recovery of memory and attention upon transplantation to a rat model with cholinergic deficits. Using stem cell-derived subtype-specific neurons, astrocytes and microglia, the Kirkeby group works on in vitro disease models of Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, schizophrenia and appetite regulation for drug and toxin screening. Dr Kirkeby has received prestigious investigator fellowships from the Independent Danish Research Foundation, the Wallenberg Foundation and the Novo Nordisk Foundation.