Charles River and Flagship’s Pioneering Medicines Enter Agreement Leveraging AI-Powered Logica with Aim of Creating Novel Therapies for Unmet Medical Needs

Rhea-AI Summary

Charles River Laboratories (CRL) has signed a multi-program agreement with Pioneering Medicines, enabling access to its AI-driven drug solution, Logica. Designed to expedite drug discovery, Logica combines Valo Health’s Opal Computational Platform and Charles River’s preclinical expertise. The collaboration aims to generate optimized small molecules for unmet medical needs within a 2-year timeframe. This integrated platform is expected to enhance efficiency in drug development, reducing costs tied to success. Flagship Pioneering's initiative, Pioneering Medicines, seeks to leverage innovative platforms to develop transformative treatments.

Positive

• Collaboration with Pioneering Medicines to utilize Logica, enhancing drug discovery efficiency.
• Logica's capability to potentially deliver first-in-class candidates in approximately two years.

Negative

• None.

Logica, an offering from Charles River and Valo Health will be deployed by Pioneering Medicines across a portfolio of targets

WILMINGTON, Mass. & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. (NYSE: CRL) today announced a multi-program agreement with Pioneering Medicines, a strategic initiative of Flagship Pioneering, that gives Pioneering Medicines access to Logica™. Logica is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered drug solution that translates biological insights into optimized preclinical assets by leveraging Valo Health’s AI-powered Opal Computational Platform and Charles River’s leading preclinical expertise. Through the agreement, Pioneering Medicines will deploy Logica across a portfolio of targets with the aim of creating optimized small molecules that lead to novel therapies for unmet medical needs.

“We are excited to work with the team at Pioneering Medicines to help accelerate the drug discovery process and deliver novel candidates to patients faster,” said Julie Frearson, PhD, Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Charles River. “Logica’s unique platform has the capability to transform a drug target into a first-in-class development candidate in just over two years.”

“We’re entering this collaboration with both Charles River and Valo with a shared desire to increase efficiency in drug discovery,” said Paul Biondi, President, Pioneering Medicines and Executive Partner, Flagship Pioneering. “By utilizing Logica, a uniquely integrated AI platform, we’re hopeful that we can more quickly advance well-characterized molecules through the development process and create and deliver novel medicines for patients sooner.”

The Strength of Logica, an Integrated AI Program

“With the combined power of Valo’s Opal Computational Platform and Charles River’s extensive drug discovery portfolio, Logica draws on a wide breadth of tools,” said Guido Lanza, Senior Vice President, and Logica General Manager, Valo Health. “We believe we have optimized drug discovery, coordinating laboratory infrastructure, expert drug hunters, and large-scale compute capabilities to eliminate whitespace and rapidly deliver results.”

In 2022, Charles River and Valo Health, Inc (“Valo”) launched Logica, leveraging 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.

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 is offered as a fully managed, risk-sharing model, with most of the client cost tied to success.

About Flagship Pioneering

Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category bioplatform companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has, through its Flagship Labs unit, applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in more than $100 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship has deployed over $3.1 billion in capital toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $19 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 42 transformative companies, including Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), Indigo Ag, Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Omega Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OMGA), Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), and Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB).

Pioneering Medicines is a strategic initiative within Flagship Pioneering that is dedicated to conceiving and developing a broad portfolio of life-changing treatments by leveraging and expanding the use of Flagship’s innovations. By harnessing the power of Flagship's multiple scientific platforms, Pioneering Medicines creates and advances novel medicines with the platform companies to accelerate the extension of their portfolios into novel areas and show that the platform can be applied more broadly, thereby delivering benefits to more patients and platforms, sooner.

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, and San Francisco, CA. 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.

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Charles River Investor Contact:

Todd Spencer,

Corporate Vice President, Investor Relations

781.222.6455

todd.spencer@crl.com

Charles River Media Contact:

Amy Cianciaruso

Corporate Vice President & Chief Communications Officer

+1-781-222-6168

amy.cianciaruso@crl.com

Valo Health Media Contact:

Jennifer Hanley

Jhanley@valohealth.com

Flagship Pioneering Media Contact:

Olivia Offner

Director of Media Relations

ooffner@flagshippioneering.com

Source: Charles River Laboratories International, Inc.

FAQ

What is the significance of the agreement between Charles River Laboratories and Pioneering Medicines?

The agreement allows Pioneering Medicines to use Charles River's AI-driven Logica platform, aimed at accelerating drug discovery for unmet medical needs.

What is Logica and how does it benefit drug discovery?

Logica is an AI-powered drug solution that integrates Valo Health’s computational platform with Charles River’s preclinical expertise to streamline drug development.

How will the collaboration affect Charles River Laboratories' stock (CRL)?

The collaboration could positively influence CRL's stock by enhancing its drug development capabilities and creating new revenue opportunities.

When was the partnership between Charles River and Pioneering Medicines announced?

The partnership was announced on February 16, 2023.