Agnete Kirkeby, PhD, is an associate professor and group leader at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW) at University of Copenhagen (Denmark) and at the Wallenberg Center for Regenerative Medicine at Lund University (Sweden). Her research group has many years of expertise in the development of protocols for accurate patterning of human neural cells from hESCs. Neural differentiation protocols generated by her group have been subject to several patent applications and are used by research groups globally. As a major contribution to the field of Parkinson’s disease (PD), Dr. Kirkeby has during the past 15 years been responsible for the preclinical development of Europe’s first pluripotent stem cell-derived dopamine cell therapy for treatment of Parkinson's Disease (STEM-PD), with the first patient transplanted in February 2023. Dr Kirkeby’s group also generates long-term co-culture models of dopamine neurons, astrocytes and microglia to study neuroimmune interactions in PD.