Charles River and Valo Health Identify a Potential Therapeutic for Lupus. (Credit: Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash)

Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries Inter­na­tion­al, Inc. (NYSE: CRL) and Valo Health, Inc. today announced the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of an advance­able prod­uct can­di­date for the treat­ment of dif­fer­ent forms of lupus and oth­er autoim­mune indi­ca­tions with sig­nif­i­cant unmet need. The dis­cov­ery is the first using Log­i­ca®, an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI)-powered drug devel­op­ment solu­tion that trans­lates bio­log­i­cal insights into opti­mized pre­clin­i­cal assets. 

“Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of this first lead can­di­date pro­vides proof-of-con­cept for Log­i­ca as an engine to expe­dite and enhance drug dis­cov­ery in a crit­i­cal ther­a­peu­tic area,” said Pro­fes­sor Julie Frear­son, PhD, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer, Charles Riv­er. ​“Togeth­er with our part­ners at Valo Health and through our ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Flagship’s Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines, we look for­ward to fur­ther lever­ag­ing the pow­er of Log­i­ca to advance this pro­gram into lead optimization.” 

Log­i­ca, the result of a strate­gic part­ner­ship between Charles Riv­er and Valo Health, is the industry’s first com­pu­ta­tion-pow­ered, uni­fied tar­get-to-can­di­date offer­ing. Log­i­ca lever­ages the inte­gra­tion of Valo Health’s AI-pow­ered Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form™ and Charles River’s lead­ing exper­tise in drug dis­cov­ery and pre­clin­i­cal development. 

A sin­gle inte­grat­ed offer­ing, Log­i­ca trans­forms the process of drug dis­cov­ery by seam­less­ly trans­lat­ing tar­gets to can­di­date nom­i­na­tion under a part­ner­ing busi­ness mod­el. The Log­i­ca Advance­able Lead (Log­i­ca-AL) pro­gram inte­grates Valo’s DNA-encod­ed libraries and Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form with Charles River’s exper­tise in high-through­put screen­ing to pro­duce potent advance­able leads. The Log­i­ca Can­di­date (Logica‑C) plat­form uses those leads and trained pre­dic­tive mod­els to rapid­ly advance a clin­i­cal pro­gram to deliv­er a can­di­date that will ulti­mate­ly be ready for IND-enabling studies. 

“We entered our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Charles Riv­er and Valo with a shared goal of accel­er­at­ing the drug dis­cov­ery process, and of expe­dit­ing the devel­op­ment of crit­i­cal­ly need­ed ther­a­pies for patients with lim­it­ed or no treat­ment options,” said Luisa Salter-Cid, Ph.D., Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer, Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines. ​“Logica’s ear­ly suc­cess in iden­ti­fy­ing a poten­tial ther­a­py for an autoim­mune dis­ease has built con­fi­dence in that shared goal, and we are excit­ed to con­tin­ue work­ing with the team as our pro­gram progresses.”