Valo & Charles River's Logica News: Charles River and Flagship’s Pioneering Medicines Enter Agreement Leveraging AI-Powered Logica with Aim of Creating Novel Therapies for Unmet Medical Needs

WILM­ING­TON, Mass. & CAM­BRIDGE, Mass. – (BUSI­NESS WIRE) – Feb. 16, 2023– Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries Inter­na­tion­al, Inc. (NYSE: CRL) today announced a mul­ti-pro­gram agree­ment with Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines, a strate­gic ini­tia­tive of Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing, that gives Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines access to Log­i­ca™. Log­i­ca is an Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) pow­ered drug solu­tion that trans­lates bio­log­i­cal insights into opti­mized pre­clin­i­cal assets by lever­ag­ing Valo Health’s AI-pow­ered Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form and Charles River’s lead­ing pre­clin­i­cal exper­tise. Through the agree­ment, Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines will deploy Log­i­ca across a port­fo­lio of tar­gets with the aim of cre­at­ing opti­mized small mol­e­cules that lead to nov­el ther­a­pies for unmet med­ical needs.

“We are excit­ed to work with the team at Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines to help accel­er­ate the drug dis­cov­ery process and deliv­er nov­el can­di­dates to patients faster,” said Julie Frear­son, PhD, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer, Charles Riv­er. ​“Logica’s unique plat­form has the capa­bil­i­ty to trans­form a drug tar­get into a first-in-class devel­op­ment can­di­date in just over two years.”

“We’re enter­ing this col­lab­o­ra­tion with both Charles Riv­er and Valo with a shared desire to increase effi­cien­cy in drug dis­cov­ery,” said Paul Bion­di, Pres­i­dent, Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines and Exec­u­tive Part­ner, Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing. ​“By uti­liz­ing Log­i­ca, a unique­ly inte­grat­ed AI plat­form, we’re hope­ful that we can more quick­ly advance well-char­ac­ter­ized mol­e­cules through the devel­op­ment process and cre­ate and deliv­er nov­el med­i­cines for patients sooner.”

The Strength of Log­i­ca, an Inte­grat­ed AI Program

“With the com­bined pow­er of Valo’s Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form and Charles River’s exten­sive drug dis­cov­ery port­fo­lio, Log­i­ca draws on a wide breadth of tools,” said Gui­do Lan­za, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, and Log­i­ca Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Valo Health. ​“We believe we have opti­mized drug dis­cov­ery, coor­di­nat­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry infra­struc­ture, expert drug hunters, and large-scale com­pute capa­bil­i­ties to elim­i­nate white­space and rapid­ly deliv­er results.”

In 2022, Charles Riv­er and Valo Health, Inc (“Valo”) launched Log­i­ca, lever­ag­ing Valo’s AI-pow­ered Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form and Charles River’s lead­ing pre­clin­i­cal exper­tise, pro­vid­ing clients with trans­formed drug dis­cov­ery with a sin­gle inte­grat­ed offer­ing seam­less­ly trans­lat­ing tar­gets to can­di­date nomination.

Log­i­ca uti­lizes indus­try-lead­ing pre­dic­tive mod­els, chem­i­cal design and syn­the­sis capa­bil­i­ties, DNA-encod­ed libraries, in sil­i­co high through­put screen­ing from Valo’s Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form as well as Charles River’s lead­ing capa­bil­i­ties in all aspects of dis­cov­ery opti­miza­tion includ­ing high through­put screen­ing, med­i­c­i­nal chem­istry, ADME, biol­o­gy, phar­ma­col­o­gy, and ulti­mate­ly safe­ty test­ing and IND sub­mis­sion, join­ing togeth­er for the first time to cre­ate a com­pu­ta­tion-pow­ered, uni­fied tar­get-to-can­di­date offer­ing. Log­i­ca is offered as a ful­ly man­aged, risk-shar­ing mod­el, with most of the client cost tied to success.

About Flag­ship Pioneering

Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing con­ceives, cre­ates, resources, and devel­ops first-in-cat­e­go­ry bio­plat­form com­pa­nies to trans­form human health and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has, through its Flag­ship Labs unit, applied its unique hypoth­e­sis-dri­ven inno­va­tion process to orig­i­nate and fos­ter more than 100 sci­en­tif­ic ven­tures, result­ing in more than $100 bil­lion in aggre­gate val­ue. To date, Flag­ship has deployed over $3.1 bil­lion in cap­i­tal toward the found­ing and growth of its pio­neer­ing com­pa­nies along­side more than $19 bil­lion of fol­low-on invest­ments from oth­er insti­tu­tions. The cur­rent Flag­ship ecosys­tem com­pris­es 42 trans­for­ma­tive com­pa­nies, includ­ing Denali Ther­a­peu­tics (NAS­DAQ: DNLI), Evelo Bio­sciences (NAS­DAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Ther­a­peu­tics (NAS­DAQ: FHTX), Indi­go Ag, Mod­er­na (NAS­DAQ: MRNA), Omega Ther­a­peu­tics (NAS­DAQ: OMGA), Sana Biotech­nol­o­gy (NAS­DAQ: SANA), and Seres Ther­a­peu­tics (NAS­DAQ: MCRB).

Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines is a strate­gic ini­tia­tive with­in Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing that is ded­i­cat­ed to con­ceiv­ing and devel­op­ing a broad port­fo­lio of life-chang­ing treat­ments by lever­ag­ing and expand­ing the use of Flagship’s inno­va­tions. By har­ness­ing the pow­er of Flag­ship’s mul­ti­ple sci­en­tif­ic plat­forms, Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines cre­ates and advances nov­el med­i­cines with the plat­form com­pa­nies to accel­er­ate the exten­sion of their port­fo­lios into nov­el areas and show that the plat­form can be applied more broad­ly, there­by deliv­er­ing ben­e­fits to more patients and plat­forms, sooner.

About Valo Health

Valo Health, Inc (“Valo”) is a tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny built to trans­form the drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment process using human-cen­tric data and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (“AI”) com­pu­ta­tion. As a dig­i­tal­ly native com­pa­ny, Valo aims to ful­ly inte­grate human-cen­tric data across the entire drug devel­op­ment life­cy­cle into a sin­gle uni­fied archi­tec­ture, there­by accel­er­at­ing the dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment of life-chang­ing drugs while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly reduc­ing the cost, time, and fail­ure rate. The company’s Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form™ con­sists of an inte­grat­ed set of capa­bil­i­ties designed to trans­form data into valu­able insights that may accel­er­ate dis­cov­er­ies and enable Valo to advance a robust pipeline of pro­grams across car­dio­vas­cu­lar, meta­bol­ic, renal, oncol­o­gy, and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease. Found­ed by Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing and head­quar­tered in Boston, MA, Valo also has offices in Lex­ing­ton, MA, New York, NY, and San Fran­cis­co, CA. To learn more, vis­it www​.val​o​health​.com.

About Charles River

Charles Riv­er pro­vides essen­tial prod­ucts and ser­vices to help phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions around the globe accel­er­ate their research and drug devel­op­ment efforts. Our ded­i­cat­ed employ­ees are focused on pro­vid­ing clients with exact­ly what they need to improve and expe­dite the dis­cov­ery, ear­ly-stage devel­op­ment and safe man­u­fac­ture of new ther­a­pies for the patients who need them. To learn more about our unique port­fo­lio and breadth of ser­vices, vis­it www​.criv​er​.com.