SereNeuro Therapeutics closed an oversubscribed pre-seed financing to advance its non-opioid pain therapy pipeline. The financing amount was not disclosed.
The investor syndicate included two Maryland-based venture firms and a physician investor.
The company plans to use the financing to move its lead program, SN101, toward Investigational New Drug-enabling activities and support development of its second program, SN102.
SN101 is an off-the-shelf therapy made from purified human pain-sensing neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells.
The treatment is designed to be delivered through a single injection into an affected joint to relieve chronic joint pain while preserving joint structure.
SereNeuro said SN101 has demonstrated preclinical proof of concept.
The technology emerged from research by co-founders Xinzhong Dong, Gabsang Lee, and Zhuolun Wang involving human iPSC-derived peripheral pain-sensing neurons.
The company’s second program, SN102, is a gene therapy targeting trigeminal neuralgia and other neuropathic pain conditions.
In September 2026, SereNeuro received its first NIH Small Business Innovation Research award supporting SN102 through the NIH HEAL Initiative.
KEY QUOTES:
“SereNeuro brings a different biology to the same problem. SN101 is made of living human sensory neurons that carry the full pain-channel identity of a native human dorsal root ganglion, or DRG, neuron: Nav1.7, Nav1.8, and Nav1.9, which most stem-cell-derived neurons lack.”
Daniel Saragnese, CEO and Co-Founder of SereNeuro Therapeutics
“It was never meant to be a drug. We were testing the cells’ function to validate the model. A joint pain model was available, and when we put the cells into the joint, we saw a therapeutic effect we had not set out to find. That observation became SN101.”
Xinzhong Dong, Co-Founder and Scientific Advisor of SereNeuro Therapeutics
“Our goal with SN102 is a single treatment that turns down pain signaling in trigeminal neuralgia and other neuropathic pain, from the neurons themselves, without opioids and without numbing everything else.”
Zhuolun Wang, Co-Founder and Scientific Advisor of SereNeuro Therapeutics
