Valo Raises $190 Million in Series B Financing and Unveils Select Therapeutic Programs Details of Initial Therapeutic Programs to be Shared at the 39th J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

BOSTON, Jan. 11, 2021 /​PRNewswire/​— Valo Health LLC (Valo), the tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny work­ing to trans­form the drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment process and accel­er­ate the cre­ation of life-chang­ing drugs, closed a $190 mil­lion Series B financ­ing and unveiled select ther­a­peu­tic pro­grams. Valo will fur­ther dis­cuss these pro­grams at the 39th Annu­al J.P. Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence on Jan­u­ary 12, 2021, at 4:20 PM EST.

Valo is cre­at­ing a new sys­temic approach for drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment. By com­bin­ing its unique human-cen­tric dataset (over 125-mil­lion patient-years) with its Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­formTM Valo is bring­ing the pow­er of patient data and machine learn­ing com­pute across the entire drug devel­op­ment life­cy­cle. The result of this sys­temic approach has been the rapid devel­op­ment of sev­er­al key pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams that have made sig­nif­i­cant progress on noto­ri­ous­ly intractable to tar­get ther­a­peu­tic pro­files, a few ini­tial exam­ples from Val­o’s oncol­o­gy port­fo­lio include:

  • NAMPT: An oppor­tu­ni­ty enabled by devel­op­ing a ther­a­peu­tic that unique­ly avoids tar­get-asso­ci­at­ed mech­a­nis­tic tox­i­col­o­gy, enabling treat­ment of key hema­to­log­i­cal and sol­id tumor malig­nan­cies through a syn­thet­ic lethal can­cer metab­o­lism approach.
  • PARP1: A key pro­tein involved in DNA repair and pro­grammed cell death that has been clin­i­cal­ly val­i­dat­ed; cen­tral­ly pen­e­trant inhibitor to unlock poten­tial treat­ment of brain metas­tases, glioblas­toma, and oth­er brain tumors. 
  • USP28: A deu­biq­ui­ti­nase where selec­tive and spe­cif­ic tar­get­ing enabled by Opal can enable a tar­get­ed approach of c‑myc dri­ven cancers.
  • HDAC3: A poten­tial first-in-class oppor­tu­ni­ty to enable a syn­thet­ic lethal­i­ty approach to treat­ing par­tic­u­lar sol­id tumors.

We have made tremen­dous progress in cre­at­ing a ful­ly inte­grat­ed plat­form to accel­er­ate the drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment process, mak­ing it far more effi­cient and less cost­ly to pro­vide life-sav­ing treat­ments to patients,” said Valo Founder & CEO, David Berry. In less than two years, we have been able to build out our Opal com­pu­ta­tion­al plat­form and make sig­nif­i­cant progress on a num­ber of pro­grams, dri­ving towards our ulti­mate goal of help­ing patients suf­fer­ing from major dis­eases with­in our three ther­a­peu­tic areas of focus, can­cer, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease. We are pleased to share some of the progress we have made in our path to new can­cer ther­a­peu­tics with the com­bined pow­er of Opal, mas­sive data, and a world-class team of experts.”

Valo raised $190M in pre­ferred equi­ty cap­i­tal through a Series B financ­ing, bring­ing its total cap­i­tal raised to over $285M. The financ­ing was led by The Pub­lic Sec­tor Pen­sion Invest­ment Board (PSP Invest­ments). Join­ing the Series B financ­ing are all of Val­o’s exist­ing major investors includ­ing Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing and sev­er­al new insti­tu­tion­al investors includ­ing Invus Pub­lic Equi­ties, HBM Health­care Invest­ments, Atinum Invest­ment, and Mirae Asset Cap­i­tal. The pro­ceeds from the Series B will sup­port the con­tin­ued dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment of ther­a­peu­tic pro­grams and will fur­ther build-out of the Com­pa­ny’s pro­pri­etary Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form, work­ing cap­i­tal, and oth­er gen­er­al purposes.

We are enter­ing a peri­od of mon­u­men­tal growth and evo­lu­tion in the biotech indus­try,” said Eduard van Gelderen, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Invest­ment Offi­cer, PSP Invest­ments. PSP is keen to invest in inno­v­a­tive, cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy that can improve peo­ple’s lives. We are proud to sup­port the extra­or­di­nary work that Valo is doing to iden­ti­fy ways to accel­er­ate the cre­ation of ther­a­peu­tics for some of the world’s most com­plex diseases.”

We are enter­ing a peri­od of mon­u­men­tal growth and evo­lu­tion in the biotech industry

— Eduard van Gelderen, Senior Vice President and Chief Investment Officer, PSP Investments

Val­o’s Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­formTM is the first-of-its-kind, end-to-end drug devel­op­ment plat­form that ful­ly inte­grates human-cen­tric data and arti­fi­cial intelligence/​machine learn­ing, to accel­er­ate the drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment process. Using Opal, Valo sci­en­tists have been able to iden­ti­fy pre­vi­ous­ly unsus­pect­ed asso­ci­a­tions between genet­ic mark­ers and dis­ease, which iden­ti­fy the spe­cif­ic changes in gene activ­i­ty with an ini­tial focus on oncol­o­gy, neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive, and car­dio­vas­cu­lar diseases. 

The live audio (non-video) direct link for David Berry’s vir­tu­al ses­sion at the J.P. Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence on Jan­u­ary 12, 2021, at 4:20 can be accessed using the fol­low­ing: https://​jpmor​gan​.metameet​ings​.net/​e​v​e​n​t​s​/​h​e​a​l​t​h​c​a​r​e​21​/​s​e​s​s​i​o​n​s​/​35837​-​v​a​l​o​-​h​e​a​l​t​h​/​w​e​b​c​a​s​t​?​g​p​u​_​o​n​l​y​=​t​r​u​e​&​k​i​o​s​k​=true

And fol­low­ing the con­fer­ence on Val­o’s LinkedIn page

About Valo
Valo Health, LLC (Valo) is a tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny that is using human-cen­tric data and machine learn­ing-anchored com­pu­ta­tion to trans­form the drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment process. By inte­grat­ing data across the drug devel­op­ment life­cy­cle, the dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment of life-chang­ing treat­ments can be accel­er­at­ed, with the poten­tial to reduce cost, time, and fail­ure rate. The com­pa­ny’s Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form, a ful­ly inte­grat­ed, com­po­nen­tized, end-to-end drug devel­op­ment plat­form, offers a unique approach to ther­a­peu­tic devel­op­ment, that enables Valo to advance a robust pipeline of can­di­dates across car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, oncol­o­gy, and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion. Found­ed by Flag­ship Pioneering and head­quar­tered in Boston, MA, Valo has offices in Water­town, MA, San Fran­cis­co, CA, Prince­ton, NJ, and in Bran­ford, CT. To learn more, vis­it www​.val​o​health​.com.

SOURCE Valo Health, LLC