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Cellular Intelligence has agreed to acquire Novo Nordisk's experimental Parkinson's disease cell therapy, with the Danish drugmaker taking an equity stake in the Boston-based AI startup as part of the deal.
STEM-PD works by introducing dopamine-producing neurons — grown in a laboratory setting — directly into the brain region where Parkinson's disease causes cell loss. It has received FDA Fast Track Designation and clearance for a Phase 2 trial, the company said. No financial terms were disclosed, though Novo Nordisk will be eligible for milestone payments and royalties if the program reaches the market.
At the core of Cellular Intelligence's approach is an AI platform that Breakstone says can model the downstream effects of incremental changes in cell production on factors like viability and quality. Data generated from clinical trials will feed back into those models, sharpening their predictive power over time, the company said.
"Cell replacement therapies have been plagued by scalability, producibility, costs, etc.," Breakstone told Fierce Biotech. "Those are exactly the areas that we believe we can improve on."
Cellular Intelligence plans to launch a Phase 2 study by the end of the year, according to Bloomberg. As part of its expansion, Cellular Intelligence has established a Copenhagen facility staffed in part by scientists who were working on STEM-PD when it was still under Novo's umbrella.
The deal is a result of Novo Nordisk's decision last October to shut down its cell therapy unit as part of a broader restructuring. Jacob Petersen, Novo's senior vice president of global research, said in a statement that finding a suitable steward for the program was essential and that Cellular Intelligence had the capabilities to advance it.
A comparable transaction was completed earlier this year, when Aspect Biosystems of Canada took on Novo's diabetes-focused cell therapy assets — an arrangement that similarly included an equity investment from the Danish drugmaker. According to Bloomberg, the STEM-PD handoff closes the book on Novo's clinical and late-preclinical cell therapy portfolio, with every program from the shuttered unit now having found a new home or been otherwise wound down.
Novo Nordisk's broader pivot toward AI has been underway for some time. The company announced a partnership with OpenAI to apply artificial intelligence across drug discovery, manufacturing, and commercial operations, with CEO Mike Doustdar saying the goal was to analyze datasets at a scale previously impossible and identify patterns faster than traditional methods allow.
Cellular Intelligence was founded in 2023 and the company has attracted more than $60 million in funding, with backers that include Khosla Ventures and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — the philanthropic vehicle of Meta $META CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company currently has six preclinical assets in addition to STEM-PD, according to Reuters.