Aspen Neuroscience Secures $115 Million to Advance Personalized Parkinson’s Cell Therapy

SAN DIEGO, November 21, 2025 — Aspen Neuroscience, a clinical-stage cell therapy developer, has secured $115 million in Series C financing to accelerate the development of its personalized treatment for Parkinson’s disease. The significant funding is earmarked to advance the company’s lead program, ANPD-001, through its ongoing early-stage clinical trial and to expand its autologous manufacturing capabilities.

The financing round was co-led by OrbiMed, Arch Venture Partners, Frazier Life Sciences, and Revelation Partners, and included strategic participation from new investor Kite Pharma (a Gilead Company), whose EVP, Cindy Perettie, will join Aspen’s board. This brings Aspen’s total capital raised to date to $340 million, including an $8 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

Personalized Approach: iPSCs to Dopamine Neurons

Aspen’s lead candidate, ANPD-001, is an autologous (patient-derived) regenerative cell therapy. It is designed to replace the dopamine-producing neurons lost in Parkinson’s disease.

The treatment’s unique process, which entered early testing in people with Parkinson’s in 2024, involves:

1. Grafting skin cells (a small biopsy) from the patient.

2. Converting these cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can transform into any cell type.

3. Differentiating the iPSCs into dopamine-producing neurons (dopaminergic neuronal precursor cells, or DANPCs).

This personalized approach is intended to restore motor function by re-forming neural networks in the brain. CEO Damien McDevitt noted that using the patient’s own cells aims to avoid immune rejection and eliminate the need for long-term immunosuppressive drugs, a major limitation of donor-derived cell therapies.

Clinical and Commercial Progress

Aspen’s current clinical trial, ASPIRO (Phase 1/2a), is assessing the safety, tolerability, and potential efficacy of ANPD-001 in patients with moderate to advanced Parkinson’s.

• The company has announced the completion of dosing for the first two cohorts and has initiated Cohort 3 using a new cryopreserved commercial formulation.

• Early six-month data presented this year showed the therapy was generally well tolerated, with initial promising safety and functional improvement signals observed without immunosuppression.

• ANPD-001 has been granted Fast Track designation by the FDA.

Looking ahead, Aspen is “well-funded” and is aiming for an FDA interaction in the first half of 2026 to discuss potentially moving directly into a Phase 3 pivotal study. The new financing will also support the progression of its preclinical pipeline, which includes a “gene edited” stem cell treatment for a rare pediatric disease.

The Competitive Landscape

Aspen is not alone in the pursuit of a cell therapy cure for Parkinson’s disease, a field of research that dates back to the initial stem cell implantations in 1989.

The company’s key competitor is BlueRock Therapeutics (a subsidiary of Bayer), which recently launched a Phase 3 study for its allogeneic (donor-derived) cell therapy, bemdaneprocel (BRT-DA01). Bemdaneprocel, also derived from stem cells, differs from ANPD-001 as it is an allogeneic product, which typically requires immunosuppressive drugs. Small biotech Oryon Cell Therapies is also testing a similar experimental therapy.

Despite a cooling in venture capital funding for the broader cell and gene therapy space in 2025, Aspen’s raise stands out. Only one other regenerative cell therapy maker developing treatments for central nervous system disorders, Neurona Therapeutics, has secured a round exceeding $100 million this year.