Kenai Therapeutics, a San Diego-based biotechnology company, has raised $82 million to support its work developing cell therapies for nervous system disorders.

Cure Ventures, a new venture capital firm founded by three longtime biotech investors, co-led the Series A round announced Thursday, alongside Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation and The Column Group. The investment is the first announced by Cure since it debuted last year with a $350 million fund. Euclidean Capital and Saisei Ventures also participated in the round.

Previously known as Ryne Bio, Kenai’s research aim is to create so-called off-the-shelf cell therapies that replace neurons. The company’s most advanced medicine is made from genetically reprogrammed stem cells and designed to treat Parkinson’s disease by restoring dopamine production.

The medicine has “displayed robust survival, innervation, and behavioral rescue in preclinical models of Parkinson’s disease,” according to Kenai, which claims it could work in inherited forms of the disease as well as in cases where the exact cause isn’t understood.

The company said the funding proceeds will be enough to push the medicine, named RNDP-001, into human testing and through early-stage clinical trials, which should start within the year.

“The potentially curative nature of RNDP-001 for Parkinson’s disease could dramatically alter outcomes for patients with very few treatment options,” said Jeff Jonas, a new partner at Cure Ventures who is now chairing Kenai’s board. Well-known across the biopharmaceutical industry, Jonas previously served as CEO for both the neuroscience drugmaker Sage Therapeutics and the startup incubator Abio-X.

Like most diseases of the brain and nervous system, Parkinson’s has proven difficult to treat, let alone cure. In just the last couple years, an experimental drug from the biotech Neuraly failed a key study; Biogen chose to prematurely end a late-stage trial of a therapy called BIIB122; and AbbVie backed away from a research alliance with Sweden’s BioArctic.

Despite the setbacks, Parkinson’s remains an attractive target for many drugmakers. AbbVie and Eli Lilly have inked deals to acquire experimental treatments for the disease. Bayer, meanwhile, has been working on its own cell therapy for Parkinson’s. The company’s Bluerock Therapeutics subsidiary announced positive early data in August, and two months later, Bayer opened a California-based manufacturing plant to support production of the therapy.