Charles River and Valo Launch Logica, an Integrated AI-Powered Drug Discovery Solution to Rapidly Deliver Optimized Preclinical Assets

Customized drug discovery offers integrated target-to-lead and target-to-clinic ready small molecules

WILMINGTON, Mass. & BOSTON — April 27, 2022 — Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. (NYSE: CRL) and Valo Health, Inc (“Valo”) have launched Logica^TM, an artificial intelligence (AI) powered drug solution that directly translates clients’ biological insights into optimized preclinical assets. Logica leverages 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.

“Through our partnership with Valo, we’re integrating Charles River’s laboratory capabilities with industry-altering AI-driven molecular design to provide our clients with highly advanceable leads and candidates, while tying client costs to value generation,” said Birgit Girshick, Corporate Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, Charles River. “AI-powered solutions are driving drug discovery forward and this is the kind of innovation our industry needs to ultimately bring effective treatments to patients faster.”

“Valo is thrilled to partner with Charles River on this first of its kind offering,” added David Berry, MD, Ph.D., founder, and CEO of Valo. “We are creating an opportunity to fully outsource small molecule discovery while providing a true risk-sharing model with advanceable leads and candidates with the goal of helping companies scale faster, translating more biological insight into candidates to make better drugs for patients, faster.”

Logica’s Advanceable Lead (Logica-AL™) and Candidate (Logica-C™) programs, which are available exclusively from Charles River, are part of a multi-year strategic partnership that Charles River and Valo announced earlier this year. Logica-AL aims to provide customers with highly advanceable, potent series with desired characteristics, such as in vitro absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) and selectivity profiles understood. In addition, the Logica-C offering will use the advanceable leads and trained predictive models to rapidly progress the program, ultimately aiming to deliver a development candidate that has undergone necessary safety and efficacy tests and is ready for IND-enabling studies.

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 combines approaches that have a demonstrated ability to produce an advanceable lead series 90 percent of the time and deliver development candidates 58 percent of the time. The products will be offered with most of the client cost tied to success.

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, San Francisco, CA, and Branford, CT. To learn more, visit www.valohealth.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.criver.com.