Valo Health and Montai Therapeutics Merge to Create Leading Drug Discovery Platform Powered by Human Evidence

Novem­ber 11, 2026, Lex­ing­ton, MA & Cam­bridge, MA - Valo Health, Inc. (“Valo”) and Mon­tai Ther­a­peu­tics today announced a merg­er to form a lead­ing drug dis­cov­ery plat­form pow­ered by human evi­dence. By unit­ing Valo’s AI-enabled human causal biol­o­gy and pre­dic­tive chem­istry capa­bil­i­ties with Montai’s proven chem­istry plat­form and clin­i­cal-stage immunol­o­gy and inflam­ma­tion (I&I) pipeline, the com­bined com­pa­ny will have expand­ed dis­cov­ery capa­bil­i­ties, data, and mod­els to devel­op new med­i­cines for nov­el and hard-to-drug biol­o­gy. Bri­an Alexan­der, MD, MPH, CEO of Valo and CEO-Part­ner at Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing, will lead the com­bined com­pa­ny, which will retain the Valo Health name. 

“Valo and Mon­tai were found­ed on the belief that human evi­dence should guide every step of drug dis­cov­ery. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in com­plex, het­ero­ge­neous areas like immunol­o­gy, where a broad diag­no­sis can have many under­ly­ing dis­ease mech­a­nisms,” said Alexan­der. ​“Togeth­er, we can apply human evi­dence from tar­get to mol­e­cule to patient, with the goal of improv­ing trans­la­tion from dis­cov­ery to med­i­cines for a wide range of diseases.”

Valo will inte­grate com­ple­men­tary dis­cov­ery chem­istry engines to access an unpar­al­leled source of poten­tial drugs, apply Valo’s human causal biol­o­gy plat­form to tar­get and patient selec­tion, and advance a pipeline of both whol­ly owned and part­nered pro­grams. Most recent­ly, Mon­tai ini­ti­at­ed a Phase 1 clin­i­cal tri­al of MTAI-1025, a nov­el oral NRF2 ago­nist being devel­oped for ulcer­a­tive col­i­tis. Valo will also advance addi­tion­al pro­grams tar­get­ing val­i­dat­ed I&I dis­ease path­ways with near-term devel­op­ment mile­stones, includ­ing Montai’s oral STAT6 inhibitor for atopic der­mati­tis and oth­er type 2 inflam­ma­to­ry dis­eases. Valo’s estab­lished bio­phar­ma part­ner­ships in car­diometa­bol­ic dis­ease and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases also will continue.

“This merg­er cre­ates a sin­gle com­pa­ny with com­ple­men­tary plat­forms, a grow­ing pipeline, estab­lished bio­phar­ma part­ner­ships, and a clear path to its next stage of growth,” con­tin­ued Alexan­der. ​“Valo and Mon­tai share a core phi­los­o­phy that human evi­dence should dri­ve drug dis­cov­ery, mak­ing this a com­pelling oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring com­ple­men­tary tech­nol­o­gy and pro­grams togeth­er while main­tain­ing momen­tum across the portfolio.”

“Mon­tai was built to har­ness AI to dis­cov­er and devel­op new oral med­i­cines from a vast, under­ex­plored chem­i­cal space with known human expo­sure. We’ve proven the plat­form works, suc­cess­ful­ly advanc­ing mul­ti­ple dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed devel­op­ment can­di­dates for clin­i­cal­ly val­i­dat­ed tar­gets his­tor­i­cal­ly intractable for small mol­e­cules,” said Mar­go Geor­giadis, co-founder and CEO of Mon­tai and CEO-Part­ner of Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing. ​“Join­ing Valo allows us to apply our plat­form to more tar­gets across I&I and broad­er ther­a­peu­tic areas as well as ensur­ing the right tar­get­ed patient pop­u­la­tions for our programs.” 

Both com­pa­nies were found­ed with­in the Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing ecosys­tem, shar­ing a com­mon sci­en­tif­ic approach that posi­tions the com­bined com­pa­ny to inte­grate quick­ly and keep its pro­grams mov­ing with­out dis­rup­tion. Geor­giadis will stay on as an advi­sor to sup­port the tran­si­tion across pro­grams and plat­form integration.

About Valo Health
Valo is redefin­ing drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment through its AI-enabled human causal biol­o­gy and closed loop chem­istry plat­forms. Valo uses AI to under­stand dis­ease causal­i­ty, iden­ti­fy patient sub­types across het­ero­ge­neous dis­eases, and pin­point nov­el drug tar­gets. The Company’s closed loop chem­istry plat­form enables rapid devel­op­ment of poten­tial mol­e­cules from tril­lions of start­ing points. Valo’s approach aims to iden­ti­fy more impact­ful drug tar­gets and small mol­e­cule ther­a­peu­tics, faster, and with greater pre­ci­sion than tra­di­tion­al R&D meth­ods. The Com­pa­ny works with lead­ing glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal part­ners, includ­ing Novo Nordisk and Mer­ck KGaA, Darm­stadt, Ger­many, in addi­tion to advanc­ing its own pipeline. Valo was found­ed by Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing in 2019. Fol­low us on LinkedIn and X.

About Mon­tai Therapeutics

Mon­tai is har­ness­ing AI to decode vast, untapped diverse chem­istry to devel­op break­through oral med­i­cines that can address per­sis­tent unmet patient needs in chron­ic inflam­ma­to­ry dis­ease. With the CONEC­TA^® plat­form, Mon­tai has built the world’s lead­ing foun­da­tion mod­els for decod­ing the com­plex lan­guage between nature’s bioac­tive chem­istry and human biol­o­gy – super­charg­ing the drug dis­cov­ery process with unprece­dent­ed pre­dictabil­i­ty and option­al­i­ty to repeat­ed­ly devel­op potent, exquis­ite­ly selec­tive drug can­di­dates with a strong safe­ty pro­file for long term chron­ic dosing.

Montai’s pipeline of nov­el oral med­i­cines focus­es on his­tor­i­cal­ly hard-to-drug tran­scrip­tion fac­tors and bio­log­ic replace­ments in inflam­ma­tion and immunol­o­gy. Its lead pro­gram, MTAI-1025, is a once dai­ly oral NRF2 ago­nist in clin­i­cal devel­op­ment for ulcer­a­tive col­i­tis. Mon­tai was found­ed in Flag­ship Labs in 2019. For more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it www​.mon​tai​.com or fol­low us on LinkedIn.

Con­tacts:

Erin Smith
esmith@​valohealth.​com

press@​flagshippioneering.​com