Cellular Intelligence, an AI-native TechBio, has acquired global rights to Novo Nordisk’s clinical-stage cell therapy program for Parkinson’s disease.
Cellular Intelligence plans to apply its proprietary AI platform to accelerate clinical development, manufacturing, and the path to commercialisation, whereas Novo Nordisk will make an equity investment in the company.
Through this agreement, Cellular Intelligence will advance the continued clinical development of the cell therapy Parkinson’s program and provide disease-modifying therapy for people living with Parkinson’s disease.
The program covers an allogeneic pluripotent stem cell-derived dopaminergic progenitor therapy, currently in a first-in-human Phase 1/2 clinical trial. It has also received FDA Fast Track Designation and IND clearance for further clinical development.
Micha Breakstone, co-founder and CEO of Cellular Intelligence, said, “This cell therapy Parkinson’s program is truly innovative and exemplifies the powerful convergence of exciting academic discovery with the uncompromising quality of a global pharmaceutical leader, and we are honoured to carry the program into its next chapter. Optimising and scaling complex cell therapy programs to reach patients globally is exactly the challenge our AI-native platform was built to solve.”
Cellular Intelligence is set to apply its AI-native platform to accelerate the program. The platform combines proprietary multiplexing technologies with a foundation model trained on data spanning millions of unique perturbation conditions. By applying its platform, Cellular Intelligence intends to accelerate development timelines, reduce costs, and improve the path to scalable manufacturing for a product with global reach.
Beyond this program, the clinical and manufacturing data generated will train Cellular Intelligence’s foundation model, with applications that could extend across cell therapy and broader regenerative medicine.
Jacob Petersen, senior vice president, Global Research, at Novo Nordisk, said, “Finding the right steward for the program was critical, and we are convinced that Cellular Intelligence has the capabilities needed to advance it further. The convergence of developmental biology and genomics, and the possibility of combining this with AI on a single platform, provide an exciting opportunity in medicine in general, and for the cell therapy field in particular.”
