Cellular Intelligence acquires rights to Novo Nordisk Parkinson’s cell therapy
Cellular Intelligence has acquired global rights to Novo Nordisk’s clinical-stage cell therapy programme for Parkinson’s disease.
As part of the agreement, Novo Nordisk will make an equity investment in Cellular Intelligence and will be eligible for future milestone payments and royalties.
Cellular Intelligence said it aims to continue clinical development of the programme and use its artificial intelligence platform to support development and manufacturing.
The company said its AI foundation model is trained on millions of cellular perturbation conditions and could help accelerate development and manufacturing towards commercialisation.
Micha Breakstone, co-founder and chief executive of Cellular Intelligence, said: “This cell therapy Parkinson’s programme 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 programme into its next chapter.”
He added that scaling advanced cell therapies for global use is “exactly the challenge our AI-native platform was built to solve”.
The therapy was developed by Novo Nordisk and is already being tested in a first-in-human Phase 1/2 clinical trial.
Phase 1/2 trials are early human studies designed to assess safety, dosing and early signs of whether a treatment may work.
The treatment is described as an allogeneic, pluripotent stem-cell-derived dopaminergic progenitor therapy.
That means it uses donor stem cells, rather than a patient’s own cells, which are developed into early-stage dopamine-producing nerve cells. Dopamine is a brain chemical involved in movement and is reduced in Parkinson’s disease.
The programme has received US Food and Drug Administration Fast Track designation, which is intended to speed up development and review of treatments for serious conditions.
Cellular Intelligence said the therapy also has investigational new drug clearance for further clinical development.
Cellular Intelligence has appointed neurologist Nuno Mendonça as chief medical officer to lead clinical advancement.
Mendonça has previously held senior roles at Bial, AbbVie and Novartis Gene Therapies, overseeing neuroscience and rare disease programmes across North America and Europe.
Novo Nordisk said it had sought a partner able to advance the programme’s scientific and manufacturing complexity.
Jacob Petersen, senior vice president of global research at Novo Nordisk, said: “We are convinced that Cellular Intelligence has the capabilities needed to move it forward.
“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 had decided to discontinue cell therapy research and development efforts in diabetes, a stem cell therapy for heart disease and another cell therapy candidate for Parkinson’s disease in early-stage trials.
The reported cuts came amid restructuring at the company aimed at reducing costs and refocusing research efforts.
