Tech duo to advance brain-penetrating drugs for CNS disorders
Mercury Bio, Meta-Flux say initial focus is on Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s
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- Mercury Bio and Meta-Flux collaborate to develop brain-penetrating drugs for CNS disorders.
- Initial focus is on Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, overcoming the blood-brain barrier challenge.
- The effort combines technology for drug delivery with AI for disease modeling and target identification.
A new collaboration aims to accelerate the development of large-molecule therapeutics capable of entering the brain to treat neurological conditions, starting with Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
The effort, from Mercury Bio and Meta-Flux, will combine Mercury’s yeast extracellular vesicle (yEV) technology, designed to deliver therapeutic molecules into nerve cells using tiny sacs derived from yeasts, with Meta-Flux’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform using biological and clinical data to track disease states and predict the effects of drugs.
“This partnership allows us to evaluate disease mechanisms and therapeutic hypotheses in a context that has historically been inaccessible,” Lee Sherlock, Meta-Flux’s CEO, said in a press release from the companies. “By applying our modeling framework to Mercury Bio’s [central nervous system (CNS)] programs, we can help strengthen the biological rationale behind advancing large-molecule therapeutics for neurodegenerative disease.” The CNS consists of the brain and spinal cord.
Developing therapies for neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s has been challenging, as most molecules cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, a tight layer of cells lining the brain’s blood vessels that prevents potentially harmful substances from entering the brain, which limits their efficacy.
Targeting the right pathways
Bruce McCormick, Mercury Bio’s CEO, said progress in treating Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases has been slow because it is tough to deliver medicines to the right place in the brain. Drugs must first get past the brain’s protective barrier, then enter brain cells, avoid being broken down once inside, and finally act on the specific processes within the cells that cause the disease.
“Our focus at Mercury Bio is on advancing therapeutics that address those … mechanisms,” McCormick said. “The yEV technology supports that goal, and Meta-Flux adds the biological intelligence needed to ensure we are targeting the right pathways with confidence.”
Mercury Bio’s patented yEVs enable precise delivery to specific cells of a wide variety of molecules, including nucleic acids (RNA, DNA) and proteins. In late 2025, the company released preclinical data showing that yEVs could successfully reach the brain and deliver proteins into nerve cells. The company said the findings showed potential for new therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Meta-Flux’s AI platform integrates large-scale datasets, from clinical data to protein and metabolic studies, to track disease states and progression and model how nerve cells respond to potential therapies. The platform can also quantify the effects of drugs across disease mechanisms, including target engagement and off-target effects.
The platform uses structured neural networks (SNNs) to map actual biological hierarchies, from genes to proteins to molecular pathways, suggesting drug interactions that are physically possible. Using SNNs, Mercury Bio can conduct simulated experiences to help prioritize pathways and identify specific biomarkers to predict how patients will respond to yEV-delivered therapies.
