Stem cells could one day rebuild what brain diseases take away, a leading scientist told Seoul

At BIX 2026, South Korea's big biotech convention in Seoul, stem cell scientist Sally Temple — co-founder of Luxa Biotechnology — described a field quietly changing what seems possible for diseases of the brain. Cells taken from a patient can be reprogrammed into stem cells and grown into tiny lab models of the brain; her team used them to trace an inherited form of dementia to a new drug target, now in clinical trials. Transplanted cells are also being tested to restore movement in Parkinson's disease, calm seizures in epilepsy and return sight in age-related macular degeneration. More than 1,200 patients had received such cell products across 116 trials by 2025, with no general safety concerns — and in one Parkinson's trial, transplanted dopamine-making cells survived 18 months and improved patients' movement scores.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation