Cellular Intelligence, Backed by Zuckerberg, Acquires Novo Nordisk’s Parkinson’s Cell Therapy Tech
Cellular Intelligence will use its AI platform to speed the clinical development and scalable manufacturing of a Phase 1/2 stem cell-derived Parkinson’s therapy acquired from Novo Nordisk, which also took an equity stake in the company.
Key Points
- Cellular Intelligence has acquired global rights to Novo Nordisk’s clinical-stage Parkinson’s cell therapy program and will lead its continued development.
- The program is an allogeneic (donor derived) pluripotent stem cell-derived dopaminergic progenitor therapy in a first-in-human Phase 1/2 trial, with FDA Fast Track Designation and IND clearance.
- Novo Nordisk has taken an equity stake in Cellular Intelligence.
In November 2025, Novo Nordisk ended all of its cell therapy projects, laying off the entire team. In January 2026, Aspect Biosystems announced they were acquiring the diabetes cell therapy programs from Novo, and now, Cellular Intelligence, backed by Mark Zuckerberg, announced they’re acquiring the Parkinson’s cell therapy program, STEM-PD.
The company plans to use its AI platform to support clinical development, process optimization, and manufacturing scale-up.
Under the agreement, Novo Nordisk will also make an equity investment to help speed its development.
STEM-PD
STEM-PD is an allogeneic (donor-derived) embryonic stem cell-derived dopaminergic progenitor program now in a first-in-human Phase 1/2 clinical trial. It has received FDA Fast Track Designation and IND clearance for further clinical development. It was originally developed at the universities of Cambridge and Lund.
The trial will transplant STEM-PD into the putamen of 8 Parkinson ‘s-affected patients’ brains in Sweden and the UK, and will primarily focus on the safety/tolerability of the therapy. Secondary and exploratory outcomes, including clinical measures, changes in anti-Parkinson’s medication, and measures of graft survival using positron emission tomography imaging, will be assessed at both 12 and 36 months post-transplant.
The Manufacturing Platform
They haven’t released much info on the platform itself, but they describe it as combining “proprietary multiplexing technologies with a foundation model trained on massive-scale data spanning millions of unique perturbation conditions” in the hopes that this will accelerate development timelines, reduce costs, and improve the path to global reach.
They put out a short teaser here:
And mention that the clinical and manufacturing data from this program will be used to further train the foundational AI model for broader applications. Most are aware that Meta has had a massive focus on AI for several years, and it will be interesting to see if this is where they find that differentiator.
Cellular Intelligence has also appointed Nuno Mendonça, M.D., as Chief Medical Officer to lead clinical advancement of the program. He is a board-certified neurologist and has held clinical development roles at Bial, AbbVie, and Novartis Gene Therapies.
More information is available at CellularIntelligence.com.
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