Serina Therapeutics announced that it was recently awarded $250,000 by the State of Alabama’s Innovate Alabama Supplemental Grant.

The funding helps support the development of SER-227, a medication that can be administered in a hospital room by a physician to provide immediate and prolonged pain relief over a period of 3-5 days. The prolonged nature of the medicine is to prevent the need to use potentially addictive opioids such as morphine in the immediate post-op period. 

Dr. Tacey Viegas, Serina’s chief operating officer and project director, said the grant will be used to complete the product development and pre-clinical studies required to support the initiation of clinical trials.

“We’re grateful to Governor Kay Ivey, Chairman Bill Poole and all the members of the Alabama Innovation Corporation Board of Directors”, Viegas said. “The Innovate Alabama Supplemental Grant helps small businesses like us take our ideas from concept to a path for commercialization and ultimately helps improve the quality of life here in Alabama, and we hope, around the world.”

Serina is a Huntsville-based pharmaceutical research and development company that has developed a proprietary drug delivery technology platform. The new grant supplements another grant the company received in 2019 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) through the Helping to End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) program.