Emeritus Professor Alan Mackay-Sim

Brief description

Professor Mackay-Sim is a neuroscientist interested in using stem cells for two purposes: for understanding causes of neuropsychiatric diseases and for transplantation repair of the nervous system.
He is using patient-derived stem cells to understand the cellular causes of two genetically complex diseases: schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease, and two disease caused by mutations in single genes: Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia, and ataxia telangiectasia.
He uses adult stem cells from the olfactory mucosa, the organ of smell in the nose and has established NeuroBank, a biobank of olfactory stem cells from more than 300 people with various neurological diseases.
He is also using induced pluripotent stem cells generated by genetically engineering skin cells from patients with schizophrenia and Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia.
Professor Mackay-Sim was scientific director of a clinical trial in which cells from the nose (called "olfactory ensheathing cells") were transplanted into the injured spinal cord to test their safety in three paraplegic patients. This trial provided a world-first precedent for a recent clinical trial in Poland in which a patient was able to walk after being transplanted with his own olfactory ensheathing cells.