Charles River and Valo Health Announce Strategic Partnership to Provide Clients with Access to AI-Enabled Drug Discovery Solutions

WILMINGTON, Mass. & BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 19, 2022-- Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. (NYSE: CRL) and Valo Health, LLC (“Valo”), the technology company using human-centric data and computation powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to transform the drug discovery and development process, today announced the formation of a multiyear strategic partnership. This agreement will combine Valo’s Opal Computational Platform with Charles River’s drug discovery and development capabilities to offer a new transformative, AI-enabled drug discovery and development platform.

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Recognizing the challenges of preclinical drug discovery, from high costs, time, and attrition rates, Valo and Charles River have joined forces to create enhanced drug discovery solutions that aim to transform the entire preclinical drug discovery process. Valo and Charles River intend to create and deliver offerings that produce preclinical assets with key performance characteristics optimized for client preferences.

The partnership’s combined offerings will utilize Valo’s Opal Platform for small molecule development, which leverages a “closed-loop” in silico-experimental platform that rapidly iterates using program data to identify novel compounds, and leverages Charles River’s capabilities in all aspects of discovery optimization, including medicinal chemistry, ADME, biology, pharmacology, and ultimately safety testing and IND submission.

The combination of Valo’s scientific innovation and deep technological expertise with Charles River’s end-to-end portfolio and industry-leading scientific bench has the potential to significantly accelerate a client’s discovery and development efforts by integrating data and compute to streamline and de-risk experimental science, enabling a faster and more effective process from de novo molecule design through lead optimization.

The combined offering will be launched in the first half of 2022 and will be available exclusively from Charles River.

Approved Quotes

“Our collaboration with Valo is another step we’re taking toward accelerating drug discovery and development. By leveraging disruptive, AI-powered tools like Opal, we can support our clients in more quickly progressing their discoveries to the clinic.” – Birgit Girshick, Corporate Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, Charles River
“We are thrilled to partner with Charles River to build these enterprise solutions and deliver them to clients. We see this as an important opportunity to help drive a change in the industry and make a significant impact to deliver better drugs to patients faster - building off each of Valo’s and Charles River’s unique capabilities.” –David Berry, MD, PhD, Founder and CEO of Valo Health