LeCun and Langer join Cellular Intelligence scientific board

Cellular Intelligence, a Boston AI company building a universal foundation model of how cells send chemical messages, said Yann LeCun, Robert “Bob” Langer, Jens Nielsen, and Fabian Theis joined its Scientific Advisory Board, with Langer also joining the Board of Directors as an observer, and the company already holding Novo Nordisk’s STEM-PD Parkinson’s cell-therapy program with FDA Fast Track designation.

HEALTH desk — top AI and biotech names are wiring themselves into a company that wants AI models to steer real cell therapies, not just slide decks.

Appointees, still the company: Yann LeCun; Robert “Bob” Langer; Jens Nielsen; and Fabian Theis to the Scientific Advisory Board — SAB for short, an outside group of scientists who advise a company, not a day-to-day management team.

Langer additionally joins the Board of Directors as an observer. A board observer sits in board meetings; the company does not say he gets a vote.

Company self-description: Cellular Intelligence is a clinical-stage AI company building a universal foundation model of cell signaling — a large reusable AI model meant to learn the chemical messages cells send so they know when to grow, change, or stop — to understand, predict, and ultimately control cellular behavior. Regenerative medicine, meaning treatments that try to repair or replace damaged tissue, is at its core.

Background named by the company: LeCun received the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award — computing’s highest prize — for deep-learning work, served as Meta’s Chief AI Scientist from 2013 to 2025, is executive chairman of AMI Labs, and is a Silver Professor at New York University. Langer is an Institute Professor at MIT, Moderna’s co-founder, and holds more than 1,500 issued and pending patents. Nielsen is CEO of the BioInnovation Institute, the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s Copenhagen life-science company engine, and a professor of systems biology at Chalmers University of Technology. Theis is director of the Computational Health Center at Helmholtz Munich, a Human Cell Atlas co-founder, and a professor at the Technical University of Munich.

Named voice on the release: Micha Breakstone, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO. He says the company is bringing together people who have changed what is possible in AI, biology, and medicine to ask whether we can learn the rules that govern how cells change and use that knowledge to help patients. His other sentences stay in Sources.

Named voice, still the same page: Yann LeCun, Scientific Advisory Board member. He says the models that interest him learn how the world works from data and predict what happens when we act on it, and that living cells present a rich version of that challenge. His other sentences stay in Sources.

Named voice, still the same page: Robert “Bob” Langer, Scientific Advisory Board member and board observer. He says what draws him is the chance to connect a fundamental understanding of cell behavior with the practical work of developing medicines. His other sentences stay in Sources.

Context named by the company: Arjun Raj arrived earlier as chief scientific officer and scientific co-founder. In May 2026 the company acquired STEM-PD, an investigational Parkinson’s disease cell therapy with FDA Fast Track designation, from Novo Nordisk. Fast Track is an FDA program that can speed review for a serious condition. Investigational means it is not an approved treatment; the company says STEM-PD’s safety and efficacy have not been established. Manufacturing and clinical data from the program, the company says, flow back into its models.

Investors named by the company include Khosla Ventures, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Novo Nordisk. None was printed on the newsroom post.

The company “between them” color — a Turing Award, more than 1,500 patents, the founding of Moderna, BioInnovation Institute leadership, Germany’s highest research honor — stays in Sources. The 1,500-patent figure is Langer’s bio, not a shared count this desk is restating as four people’s patents.

Plain English for the rest of the card: SAB / Scientific Advisory Board = outside scientists who advise a company. board observer = sits in board meetings; the company does not say this seat votes. foundation model = a large AI model trained on lots of data and reused for many jobs. cell signaling = the chemical messages cells send so they know when to grow, change, or stop. Fast Track = an FDA program that can speed review for a serious condition. investigational = not an approved treatment; safety and efficacy are not established. STEM-PD = the Parkinson’s cell-therapy program Cellular Intelligence says it acquired from Novo Nordisk in May 2026. regenerative medicine = treatments that try to repair or replace damaged tissue. Turing Award = computing’s highest prize. This filing is the SAB / observer announce. It is not a trial result and not a new drug approval.