Charles River and Valo Health Identify a Potential Therapeutic for Lupus Using Logica®, an AI-Powered Drug Discovery Platform

WILM­ING­TON, Mass. and CAM­BRIDGE, Mass., March 25, 2025 — 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.”

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. Charles River’s 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 Charles River’s unique port­fo­lio and breadth of ser­vices, vis­it www​.criv​er​.com.

About Valo Health

Valo Health, Inc is lever­ag­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and advanced ana­lyt­ics to bet­ter learn from the patient expe­ri­ence to dis­cov­er and devel­op bet­ter med­i­cines at greater speed and scale. The company’s Opal Plat­form™ is a human-cen­tric, AI-dri­ven drug devel­op­ment engine that uses AI to iden­ti­fy and val­i­date nov­el drug tar­gets using real-world data and human mod­els to rapid­ly dis­cov­er and devel­op small mol­e­cule ther­a­pies against those tar­gets with more pre­dictable safe­ty and effi­ca­cy. Found­ed by Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing and head­quar­tered in Lex­ing­ton, Mass., Valo also has offices in New York, N.Y. and Tel Aviv, Israel. To learn more, vis­it valo​health​.com.

About Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing and Pio­neer­ing Medicines

Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing invents and builds bio­plat­form com­pa­nies, each with the poten­tial for mul­ti­ple prod­ucts that trans­form human health or sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Since its launch in 2000, Flag­ship has orig­i­nat­ed and fos­tered more than 100 sci­en­tif­ic ven­tures, result­ing in more than $60 bil­lion in aggre­gate val­ue. Flag­ship is oper­at­ing with $14 bil­lion of assets under man­age­ment as of its lat­est cap­i­tal raise, announced in July 2024. The cur­rent Flag­ship ecosys­tem com­pris­es over 40 com­pa­nies, includ­ing Foghorn Ther­a­peu­tics (NAS­DAQ: FHTX), Mod­er­na (NAS­DAQ: MRNA), Sana Biotech­nol­o­gy (NAS­DAQ: SANA), Gen­er­ate Bio­med­i­cines, Inari, Indi­go Agri­cul­ture, and Tessera Ther­a­peu­tics.

Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines, Flag­ship Pioneering’s in house drug devel­op­ment unit, is ded­i­cat­ed to con­ceiv­ing and devel­op­ing a broad port­fo­lio of life-chang­ing treat­ments for patients built from Flagship’s inno­v­a­tive plat­forms. Har­ness­ing the drug devel­op­ment exper­tise of its team togeth­er with the pow­er of Flag­ship’s mul­ti­ple sci­en­tif­ic plat­forms, Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines explores and iden­ti­fies new prod­uct con­cepts which are then advanced joint­ly with Flagship’s bio­plat­form com­pa­nies. With­in Flagship’s Inno­va­tion Sup­ply Chain part­ner­ships, Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines works with exter­nal col­lab­o­ra­tors to apply its unique approach to part­ners’ R&D pri­or­i­ties. These part­ner­ships are high­ly co-cre­ative strate­gic alliances that accel­er­ate ther­a­peu­tic inno­va­tion by bring­ing togeth­er part­ners span­ning the full spec­trum of drug dis­cov­ery, devel­op­ment, and production.

Con­tacts:

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:
 

Corey Carmichael

(862) 260‑7929

corey.​carmichael@​smithsolve.​com

Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing Media Con­tact:

Amy Lyons

Senior Direc­tor of Communications

781.696.1766

alyons@​flagshippioneering.​com