DrSimon Maksour

I am passionate about understanding the cellular and molecular changes that occur early in disease progression and identifying novel therapeutic avenues to better treat devastating neurodegenerative conditions. I have extensive experience using induced pluripotent stem cells to generate neural cells and organoids to model neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration and applied these to a range of diseases inclduing Alzheimer's disease, Motor Neurone disease, Friederichs's ataxia, Vanishing White Matter disease, Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease. I have been recognised for my contribution to stem cell research through receiving the Australasian Society for Stem Cell Research (ASSCR) Rising Star Award.

I am the Race Against Dementia - Dementia Australia Research Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow (2025-2030) where I will validate a microglia-specific gene therapy for Alzheimer's disease in advanced stem cell models (organoids and chimeric mice).

I completed my PhD at the University of Wollongong (March 2023) supervised by Prof Mirella Dottori, where I utilised neurons, glia and organoids generated from human stem cells, in addition to human post-mortem tissue, to model Alzheimer's disease (AD). During my first postdoctoral training at the University of Wollongong (led by Prof Lezanne Ooi), I identified a novel, neuroprotective natural product through high-throughput screening in motor neurons generated from MND donors.