StemPharm: Stem Pharm Awarded $2.5 Million NIH Phase II SBIR Grant to Advance Alzheimer’s Disease Drug Discovery Using Human Neural Organoids

Stem Pharm, Inc, a neuroinflammation-focused drugdiscovery company, today announced that it has been awarded a $2.5 million Phase II SmallBusiness Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of theNational Institutes of Health (NIH). The two-year award will support the project, “Alzheimer’sDisease Drug Discovery Using a Human Organoid Model of Neuroinflammation,” and advanceStem Pharm’s proprietary human neuroimmune organoid technology into therapeutic screening.

The Phase II program builds on Stem Pharm’s prior NIA-funded Phase I work to develop a humaninduced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived organoid model that captures key features ofAlzheimer’s disease-associated neuroinflammation. Alzheimer’s disease is increasinglyunderstood as a complex, multifactorial disorder extending beyond amyloid and tau pathology.Human genetic and biological studies have implicated microglial dysfunction, chronicneuroinflammation, lipid dysregulation, and other pathways in disease progression. Stem Pharm’smodel is designed to capture several of these interacting mechanisms within a reproduciblehuman organoid system. That work recently culminated in a 2026 peer-reviewed publication inCells describing a stimulus-based Alzheimer’s model in which recombinant ApoE4 and amyloidbeta induce a disease phenotype characterized by microglial activation and lipid accumulation,sustained inflammatory signaling, and neurodegeneration. The organoid model incorporatesneurons, astrocytes, microglia, and vascular cells and was specifically developed for drugdiscovery applications.

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