Valo Health and Novo Nordisk expand collaboration to discover and develop novel treatments for cardiometabolic diseases

Bagsværd, Den­mark and Lex­ing­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts, US, 8 Jan­u­ary 2025 – Novo Nordisk A/S and Valo Health, Inc. today announced they have entered into an expand­ed agree­ment to dis­cov­er and devel­op nov­el treat­ments for obe­si­ty, type 2 dia­betes, and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease based on Valo’s exten­sive human dataset and com­pu­ta­tion pow­ered by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI).

The com­pa­nies orig­i­nal­ly part­nered in Sep­tem­ber 2023 in an agree­ment that allowed for the devel­op­ment of up to 11 drug pro­grammes, pri­mar­i­ly focused on car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, through which Valo was eli­gi­ble to receive up to 2.7 bil­lion US dol­lars in mile­stone pay­ments, plus R&D fund­ing and poten­tial roy­al­ty payments.

Under the terms of the expand­ed agree­ment, Valo is enti­tled to receive an upfront pay­ment, equi­ty invest­ment, and a poten­tial near-term mile­stone pay­ment, totalling 190 mil­lion dol­lars, and is now eli­gi­ble to receive mile­stone pay­ments for up to 20 drug pro­grammes, an addi­tion of 9 new drug pro­grammes, totalling approx­i­mate­ly 4.6 bil­lion dol­lars, plus R&D fund­ing and poten­tial roy­al­ty payments. 

The expand­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion will con­tin­ue to lever­age the capa­bil­i­ties of Valo’s Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form™, as well as key joint capa­bil­i­ties in human data and genet­ics with Novo Nordisk’s exper­tise in car­diometa­bol­ic diseases. 

“We are very pleased with the progress we have made togeth­er with Valo dur­ing the first year of our col­lab­o­ra­tion, and we are excit­ed to expand the scope to put a stronger focus on obe­si­ty and type 2 dia­betes in addi­tion to car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease,” said Mar­cus Schindler, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and chief sci­en­tif­ic offi­cer of Novo Nordisk. ​“We have already begun to real­ize the poten­tial of com­bin­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of Valo and Novo Nordisk to advance mul­ti­ple AI-pow­ered, human-cen­tric pro­grammes, and we believe this part­ner­ship will help Novo Nordisk ful­fil our ambi­tion to expand the num­ber of new drug pro­grammes we bring to the clinic.” 

The col­lab­o­ra­tion has already led to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of sev­er­al nov­el tar­gets that may form the basis of dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed car­diometa­bol­ic drug pro­grammes, and the com­pa­nies are active­ly work­ing on mul­ti­ple small mol­e­cule pre­clin­i­cal drug dis­cov­ery programmes.

“We are excit­ed to build off our ear­ly progress with Novo Nordisk, a glob­al leader in obe­si­ty and dia­betes ther­a­peu­tics, espe­cial­ly giv­en the renais­sance moment in the treat­ment of car­diometa­bol­ic dis­eases. This lev­el of invest­ment is a tes­ta­ment to our close part­ner­ship in deploy­ing human-cen­tric arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to rapid­ly dis­cov­er and devel­op nov­el car­dio­vas­cu­lar and meta­bol­ic dis­ease ther­a­peu­tics,” said Bri­an Alexan­der, CEO of Valo Health and CEO-Part­ner, Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing. ​“The part­ner­ship ful­ly lever­ages the Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form by seek­ing to iden­ti­fy nov­el ther­a­peu­tic tar­gets in large real-world patient datasets, val­i­date those tar­gets using human pre­clin­i­cal mod­els, and devel­op ther­a­peu­tics against those tar­gets with human-cen­tric AI small mol­e­cule design.”

The expand­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion allows for a deep­er part­ner­ship between the two com­pa­nies, with activ­i­ties that span the entire drug dis­cov­ery con­tin­u­um. Novo Nordisk and Valo plan to con­tin­ue work­ing close­ly togeth­er to derive nov­el insights from human genet­ic and lon­gi­tu­di­nal patient data at the inter­sec­tion of obe­si­ty, type 2 dia­betes, and car­dio­vas­cu­lar disease. 

About Valo Health 

Valo Health, Inc is lever­ag­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and advanced ana­lyt­ics to bet­ter learn from the patient expe­ri­ence to dis­cov­er and devel­op bet­ter med­i­cines at greater speed and scale. The company’s Opal Plat­form™ is a human-cen­tric AI-dri­ven drug devel­op­ment engine that uses AI to iden­ti­fy and val­i­date nov­el drug tar­gets using real world data and human mod­els to rapid­ly dis­cov­er and devel­op small mol­e­cule ther­a­pies against those tar­gets with more pre­dictable safe­ty and effi­ca­cy. Found­ed by Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing and head­quar­tered in Lex­ing­ton, MA, Valo also has offices in New York, NY and Tel Aviv, Israel. To learn more, vis­it val​o​health​.com.

About Novo Nordisk

Novo Nordisk is a lead­ing glob­al health­care com­pa­ny, found­ed in 1923 and head­quar­tered in Den­mark. Our pur­pose is to dri­ve change to defeat seri­ous chron­ic dis­eases, built upon our her­itage in dia­betes. We do so by pio­neer­ing sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs, expand­ing access to our med­i­cines, and work­ing to pre­vent and ulti­mate­ly cure dis­ease. Novo Nordisk employs about 72,000 peo­ple in 80 coun­tries and mar­kets its prod­ucts in around 170 coun­tries. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it novonordisk​.com, Face­book, X, LinkedIn and YouTube.

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