Cells have always been the body’s original intelligence system – sensing, adapting, repairing, and communicating with remarkable precision. Today, artificial intelligence is beginning to mirror that same biological brilliance, transforming how we diagnose and treat disease.
Stem‑cell therapy, once defined by painstaking laboratory work and slow trial-and-error experimentation, is undergoing a profound transformation. AI‑native platforms are beginning to reshape how scientists design, test, and manufacture living medicines. At the forefront of this shift is Cellular Intelligence.
The Boston‑based TechBio company co‑founded and led by Israeli entrepreneur Dr. Micha Breakstone, aims to transform stem cell research and bring innovative solutions to devastating diseases affecting millions around the world.
Breakstone, who previously co-founded the Israeli tech company Chorus.ai, has positioned Cellular Intelligence (previously known as Somite AI) at the intersection of computational modeling and regenerative medicine.
The company’s scientific base was built in collaboration with academic researchers, including Prof. Allon Klein of Harvard Medical School and developmental biologist Prof. Olivier Pourquie, and Dr. Nuno Mendonca, who heads the clinical advancement of the Parkinson’s program.
The company’s platform integrates high‑throughput multiplexing methods with a foundation model trained on large numbers of cellular perturbation conditions.
The system is designed to incorporate data generated during clinical and manufacturing processes, creating a feedback loop intended to improve predictive accuracy over time.
The aim is to support the development of cell therapies that can be produced consistently and at scale, addressing one of the major challenges that has limited the field.
Cellular Intelligence says that by combining large-scale cellular data with AI, the company is “decoding the rules of cell signaling and turning biology from observation into predictive engineering.”
The use of AI has excited scientists, and just one day after acquiring global rights to Novo Nordisk’s clinical‑stage cell therapy program for Parkinson’s disease, Cellular Intelligence held an expert symposium on the convergence of Artificial Intelligence and Biology at the Novo Nordisk Foundation headquarters in Copenhagen.
The day-long event in mid-May brought together 28 experts in the fields of AI, biology, regenerative medicine, venture, and company building for a day-long symposium on Engineering Cell Fate, something Breakstone believes will become the next AlphaFold moment for biology.
“We are using AI to understand how cells communicate and to make new tissue,” Breakstone said during a talk with Olivier Pourquie at the symposium.
During the talk with Pourquie, Breakstone pointed to Parkinson’s, Type 1 diabetes, epilepsy, and macular degeneration as other diseases that could be helped by their technology.
Parkinson’s disease affects millions of people worldwide, and current treatments primarily focus on managing symptoms rather than replacing the neurons lost to the condition.
The STEM‑PD therapy is designed to introduce new dopamine‑producing cells, offering a regenerative approach that differs fundamentally from existing therapies.
“Bringing AI into this world has been challenging; we are trying to create noise in the room, to create a notion of urgency in this ecosystem,” Breakstone told the Magazine at the symposium.
According to him, much of the technology was already there to integrate AI into the field of biology. “The issue isn’t convincing people, it’s executing,” he said.
A Danish home
Denmark’s capital has a long history of producing results in therapeutics, and Breakstone explained that the company “landed in a perfect home” when they signed the deal with Novo Nordisk. “We are infusing AI into the culture of this ecosystem here in Copenhagen.”
Biology is very complex, and for decades, finding cures to debilitating diseases has taken decades and cost millions of dollars. In recent years, the application of AI into the field has made significant strides, including allowing scientists to predict how cells would respond to external cues.
With Novo Nordisk’s clinical‑stage cell therapy program, Cellular Intelligence plans to apply its AI foundation model, which is trained on millions of cellular perturbation conditions, to accelerate the development and manufacturing of the therapy toward commercialization.
The company says its platform can compress traditional cell‑therapy timelines and reduce production costs, a key barrier to commercializing complex regenerative‑medicine products.
The program’s progress will be closely watched as researchers and industry leaders evaluate the potential of AI‑supported development pipelines to accelerate the arrival of next‑generation treatments.
“It can speed things up,” said Jens Nielsen, CEO of BioInnovation Institute (BII), Copenhagen, Denmark, and professor of systems biology at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Speaking to the Magazine on the sidelines of the symposium, Nielsen said that AI can help speed up “preparations, analysis, development time and cost.”
Cellular Intelligence, he said, “is infusing technology to biology, which is super complex.”
The BII is a life science and DeepTech innovation institute in Copenhagen. It supports over 130 startups that have collectively raised over €1 billion in external funding.
According to Nielsen, “Israel has excellent innovation and drive. We want to capture that for Copenhagen. The fusion of our history and that technology will enrich the ecosystem.”
Nielsen, who has visited Israel numerous times and has spoken to key stakeholders, explained that while Israel has a lot of biotech companies, there are fewer health-tech companies. Denmark, he said, “despite its small size, has a lot to offer in terms of drug development competence.”
It’s personal
For Breakstone, finding a cure for Parkinson’s is personal. Yet, it’s not only Parkinson’s that Cellular Intelligence hopes to find a cure for.
“Cancer is really interesting. We are having initial thoughts about the disease and are optimistic about learning how cancer evolves and behaves.”
Vitaly Formin, CEO of Numenos, also hopes to use AI to match drugs to biology and thereby “cure everything, starting with cancer.”
According to the company, its CURE platform integrates and analyzes clinical trial data, revealing valuable insights that guide decision-making and patient stratification.
With a diverse team made up of entrepreneurs, biologists, physicists, and AI specialists, the company specializes in detecting biomarkers early in clinical trial development to allow for cheaper and more successful phase three clinical trial design.
Formin noted that Numenos aims to match drugs to a person’s biology and predict what the drug will do.
“We look at the human as a whole biological system. We find the law of one disease and apply it to others,” he said on the sidelines of the symposium. “Cancer is a process of life. You can take data from a specific cancer and apply it to other diseases. The data is interconnected.”
Formin believes that with the help of AI, patients would have extended time to speak with their physician. “We want every patient to have a Ph.D in their disease,” he said.
“The future of biotech will change human revolution,” Formin stated.
Not destiny, but designed
AI‑native platforms are not just accelerating stem‑cell therapy; they are now redefining what is scientifically possible. Cellular Intelligence’s fusion of computational power, biological insight, and global collaboration signals a turning point where living medicines can now be engineered with the same intentionality as any other technology.
What once depended on slow intuition is shifting toward predictive, data‑driven design, opening the door to therapies that are scalable, precise, and personalized.
The momentum building in Copenhagen, Boston, and Israel shows that this is no isolated trend but the emergence of a new biomedical architecture.
It is one where regenerative medicine is guided by algorithms that learn, adapt, and improve. If the field succeeds, diseases long considered intractable may become tractable, and conditions managed for decades may finally be cured.
As cellular intelligence guides the body toward healing, AI is guiding modern medicine toward a future where care is smarter, gentler, and profoundly more effective.
As Breakstone puts it, “Biology is no longer destiny, but designed.”
The writer was a guest of the symposium.