SereNeuro Closes Pre Seed Round for Pain Programs

SereNeuro Therapeutics has closed an oversubscribed pre-seed financing round to advance SN101, its non-opioid therapy for chronic joint pain. The preclinical biotechnology company will use the funding for SN101’s Investigational New Drug, or IND, enabling activities and its second program, SN102. The investor syndicate included two Maryland venture firms and a physician investor. Qualifying investors used Maryland’s Biotechnology Investment Incentive Tax Credit at the enhanced refundable rate for companies in a federal Opportunity Zone, including SereNeuro’s East Baltimore site.

SN101 Moves Toward IND Studies

SN101 is an off-the-shelf treatment made from purified human pain-sensing neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs. It is designed for a single injection into an affected joint to relieve chronic joint pain while preserving joint structure. SereNeuro says the program has demonstrated preclinical proof of concept.

“Non-opioid pain therapeutics have become one of the most active corners of biotech this year, with an IPO, nine-figure financings, and pharma licensing deals, nearly all of it chasing one family of sodium channels for symptom relief. 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. SN101 cells are designed to relieve pain and preserve the joint. This capital, with the non-dilutive funding we continue to secure, carries SN101 toward the manufacturing and preclinical studies an IND requires.”

A Discovery From Pain Research

The technology behind SN101 was developed by co-founders Xinzhong Dong, Ph.D., Gabsang Lee, D.V.M., Ph.D., and Zhuolun (Poppy) Wang, Ph.D. Dong and Lee began their collaboration to build a human iPSC-derived model of peripheral pain-sensing neurons to discover new non-opioid pain drug targets.

“Gabsang and I began this collaboration to build a human iPSC-derived model of peripheral pain-sensing neurons, pure and specific enough to control for neuron subtype, so we could discover new non-opioid pain drug targets. 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.”

Second Program Targets Neuropathic Pain

SN102 is a gene therapy program for trigeminal neuralgia and other neuropathic pain. In September 2026, after the financing closed, SereNeuro received its first National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research award for SN102 through the NIH HEAL Initiative.

“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.”

Pipeline Focuses on Non Opioid Treatments

SereNeuro’s pipeline combines iPSC-derived neuron therapies and gene therapies for pain. The company was also selected by the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine to present an Innovation Spotlight at the 2026 Cell & Gene Meeting on the Mesa in Phoenix.