Cellular Intelligence announced that it has entered into an agreement with Novo Nordisk to acquire global rights to Novo Nordisk’s clinical-stage cell therapy program for Parkinson’s disease. The program is an allogeneic, pluripotent stem cell-derived dopaminergic progenitor therapy that is currently being evaluated in a first-in-human Phase 1/2 clinical trial. The therapy has received FDA Fast Track Designation and investigational new drug (IND) clearance for further clinical development.
Under the agreement, Cellular Intelligence plans to apply its proprietary AI-native platform to accelerate clinical development, manufacturing and the path to potential commercialization of the Parkinson’s cell therapy program. The company’s platform combines proprietary multiplexing technologies with a foundation model trained on large-scale data across millions of unique perturbation conditions, with the intention of compressing traditional cell therapy process development and manufacturing timelines and reducing costs. Novo Nordisk will make an equity investment in Cellular Intelligence and will remain eligible to receive future milestone payments and royalties.
Cellular Intelligence stated that it aims to advance the continued clinical development of the Parkinson’s cell therapy program and develop a disease-modifying therapy for people living with Parkinson’s disease. The company plans to leverage the clinical and manufacturing data generated from the program to further train its foundation model, with potential applications across cell therapy and regenerative medicine. As part of the transaction, Cellular Intelligence is appointing Nuno Mendonça, M.D., a board-certified neurologist with prior senior clinical development roles at Bial, AbbVie and Novartis Gene Therapies in neuroscience and rare diseases, as Chief Medical Officer to lead the program’s clinical advancement.
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