Valo Health Awarded Grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation to Advance Parkinson’s Disease Research

LEX­ING­TON, Mass., Sep­tem­ber 9, 2025: — Valo Health, Inc. (“Valo”), a com­pa­ny using human data and AI to rapid­ly dis­cov­er and devel­op new med­i­cines, today announced that it has been award­ed a research grant from The Michael J. Fox Foun­da­tion (MJFF) as part of its Tar­gets to Ther­a­pies Ini­tia­tive, which aims to expand the num­ber of promis­ing drug­gable bio­log­i­cal tar­gets in Parkinson’s dis­ease (PD). Valo was select­ed for its exper­tise in lever­ag­ing robust human data sets and advanced AI-enabled ana­lyt­i­cal tools to under­stand the under­ly­ing caus­es of dis­ease and pri­or­i­tize tar­gets for new medicines. 

Valo will be part of a con­sor­tium aimed at advanc­ing our under­stand­ing of nucleotide-bind­ing oligomer­iza­tion domain con­tain­ing 2 (NOD2), which was recent­ly found to be asso­ci­at­ed with increased risk of PD.[1] Lever­ag­ing genet­ics, mul­ti-omics, and net­work biol­o­gy ana­lyt­ics, focus­ing on both cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem and immune cells, Valo will clar­i­fy the causal rela­tion­ships between NOD2 and relat­ed path­ways at the inter­sec­tion of PD and autoim­mune dis­eases, to iden­ti­fy opti­mal strate­gies for NOD2 mod­u­la­tion to mean­ing­ful­ly impact the pro­gres­sion and sever­i­ty of this disease.

“The Michael J. Fox Foundation’s sin­gle, urgent goal remains to find bet­ter ther­a­pies and a cure for peo­ple and fam­i­lies with Parkinson’s. Expand­ing the num­ber of well-char­ac­ter­ized, drug­gable tar­gets is a crit­i­cal part of the puz­zle,” said Shali­ni Pad­man­ab­han, PhD, senior vice pres­i­dent and head trans­la­tion­al research at MJFF. ​“We are encour­aged by the field-wide col­lab­o­ra­tion and open-sci­ence approach to tar­get val­i­da­tion in Parkinson’s dis­ease, includ­ing through Valo Health’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in study­ing key gaps relat­ed to NOD2 as a ther­a­peu­tic tar­get option to slow down dis­ease progression.”

Val­o’s nov­el approach to drug dis­cov­ery begins with real world data and human pre­clin­i­cal mod­els to start with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the causal biol­o­gy in human dis­ease. The com­pa­ny has unique access to com­plete, real-world out­comes for more than 17 mil­lion patients, some with genom­ic data and patient his­to­ries span­ning more than 20 years. Valo part­ners with researchers across the drug dis­cov­ery ecosys­tem to extract knowl­edge from this exten­sive data set, under­stand the mech­a­nisms of dis­ease, pri­or­i­tize tar­gets for new med­i­cines and rapid­ly devel­op new small molecules. 

“This col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Michael J. Fox Foun­da­tion is an excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to deep­en our col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of Parkinson’s dis­ease,” said Bri­an Alexan­der, MD, MPH, CEO at Valo Health. ​“Val­o’s exper­tise in human causal biol­o­gy using human genet­ics and real-world data allows us to unrav­el the het­ero­gene­ity and com­plex­i­ty of human dis­ease, lead­ing to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of tar­gets for ther­a­peu­tic explo­ration, like NOD2 in Parkinson’s. We believe this approach – max­i­miz­ing learn­ing from patients ear­ly in the dis­cov­ery process – will ulti­mate­ly change how we devel­op new medicines.”

About Valo Health:
Valo aims to rede­fine drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment by inte­grat­ing large-scale human obser­va­tion­al data, advanced AI, human trans­la­tion­al mod­els, and pre­dic­tive chem­istry into a unique drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment engine: The Opal Plat­form. Valo uses AI to learn about com­plex dis­eases from vast amounts of human data and iden­ti­fy patient sub­types and promis­ing new drug tar­gets. The Com­pa­ny val­i­dates dis­ease tar­gets using pro­pri­etary 3D engi­neered human tis­sue mod­els that mim­ic mature human tis­sue phys­i­ol­o­gy and struc­ture, and its closed loop chem­i­cal dis­cov­ery engine is designed to enable the rapid devel­op­ment of poten­tial mol­e­cules from tril­lions of poten­tial start­ing points. Valo aims to use human data and advanced ana­lyt­i­cal tools to iden­ti­fy more poten­tial drug tar­gets, faster, and with high­er impact poten­tial than tra­di­tion­al R&D methods.

About The Michael J. Fox Foundation’s ​“Tar­gets to Ther­a­pies Ini­tia­tive” 
The Michael J. Fox Foun­da­tion for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) launched its Tar­gets to Ther­a­pies Ini­tia­tive in 2024 to expand the num­ber of promis­ing, drug­gable bio­log­i­cal tar­gets with­in the Parkinson’s dis­ease (PD) trans­la­tion­al pipeline. Lever­ag­ing MJFF’s many years of expe­ri­ence sup­port­ing tar­get val­i­da­tion and advance­ment, the ini­tia­tive takes a fresh approach com­bin­ing com­mu­ni­ty-sourced tar­get nom­i­na­tion with expert pan­el-guid­ed pri­or­i­ti­za­tion and val­i­da­tion roadmaps to deliv­er tar­gets that are ripe for Parkinson’s ther­a­peu­tic devel­op­ment. These tar­gets stem from efforts across the field, includ­ing rich inputs from MJFF research pro­gram datasets and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Align­ing Sci­ence Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) ini­tia­tive-sup­port­ed pro­grams includ­ing the Col­lab­o­ra­tive Research Net­work (CRN), the Parkinson’s Pro­gres­sion Mark­ers Ini­tia­tive (PPMI) and the Glob­al Parkinson’s Genet­ics Pro­gram (GP2). Learn more here.

Media Con­tact:

Erin Smith

esmith@​valohealth.​com