Charles River Laboratories International Inc. and Valo Health Inc. (Valo) have launched Logica, 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 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 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.