Dr Juan Polanco

Dr Juan Carlos Polanco leads a research team on "Extracellular Vesicles and Neurodegenerative Disorders" at the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research (CJCADR), part of the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland (UQ). He holds an MSc in Biochemistry from the National University of Colombia and a PhD in Molecular Bioscience from UQ. During his PhD, Dr Polanco made significant contributions to understanding how SOX genes are involved in XX disorders of sex development. He furthered his expertise during a postdoctoral fellowship at CSIRO, developing assays to detect unstable human-induced pluripotent stem cells prone to tumorigenesis.

In 2013, Dr Polanco joined Prof. Jürgen Götz's lab at CJCADR, where he began pioneering work on small extracellular vesicles, known as exosomes. His highly cited 2016 paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry was the first to demonstrate that exosomes encapsulate 'Tau seeds' capable of inducing Tau aggregation in recipient cells. He also showed that exosomes can propagate between interconnected neurons and that some exosomes internalised by neurons are re-released by hijacking endogenous secretory endosomes, thereby increasing their pathogenicity (Acta Neuropathologica Communications, 2018). Since 2019, Dr Polanco has secured NHMRC grants and leads a research team within Prof. Götz's larger laboratory at CJCADR.