Cellular Intelligence has secured global rights to Novo Nordisk's clinical-stage cell therapy program targeting Parkinson's disease, a rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disorder affecting nearly 12 million people worldwide, the company announced.

Under the agreement, Novo Nordisk will invest equity in Cellular Intelligence and stand to receive future milestone payments along with royalties. The financial details were not made public.

The company stated in a press release that it plans to drive forward the clinical development of this Parkinson's cell therapy program to deliver a transformative, disease-altering treatment for patients battling the condition.

Cellular Intelligence intends to deploy its AI foundation model - trained across millions of cellular perturbation scenarios - to hasten the therapy's development and manufacturing processes toward commercialization. According to the firm, this platform can shorten standard cell-therapy timelines and lower production costs, addressing a critical hurdle in bringing advanced regenerative medicines to market.

FDA Fast Track Designation

This partnership places Cellular Intelligence in charge of an allogeneic dopaminergic progenitor therapy derived from pluripotent stem cells, which is currently undergoing a first-in-human Phase 1/2 clinical trial. The program holds FDA Fast Track designation status and has received IND clearance to proceed with further clinical studies.

Novo Nordisk originally developed the therapy.

"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 honored to carry the program into its next chapter," said Micha Breakstone, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Cellular Intelligence.

He further noted that scaling advanced cell therapies for widespread global access is "exactly the challenge our AI-native platform was built to solve."

To guide the clinical progress, Cellular Intelligence has recruited neurologist Nuno Mendonca, MD, as chief medical officer. Mendonca previously served in senior positions at Bial, AbbVie, and Novartis Gene Therapies, leading neuroscience and rare-disease initiatives across North America and Europe.

Novo Nordisk indicated it needed a partner adept at managing the program's scientific and manufacturing demands.

"We are convinced that Cellular Intelligence has the capabilities needed to move it forward," said Jacob Petersen, the company's senior vice president of global research. "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."

In October, Danish publication Borsen reported that Novo Nordisk chose to end its cell therapy research and development work on diabetes treatments, a stem cell therapy for heart disease, and an early-stage Parkinson's candidate.

These reductions formed part of a company-wide restructuring effort to trim expenses and refocus research priorities.