The drug discovery pact between Charles River Laboratories, Valo Health and Flagship Pioneering is starting to bear fruit. Charles River and Valo’s molecule designing platform has yielded its first drug candidate, a small molecule intended to treat lupus and other as yet unidentified autoimmune diseases, the partners announced March 25.
“The target [outside lupus] is confidential, but this is a small-molecule inhibitor program for a first-in-class target for autoimmune disease,” Julie Frearson, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Charles River Labs, told Fierce Biotech in an email. “There are currently no drugs on the market that modulate this target.”
Charles River and Flagship-backed Valo Health, along with the drug development arm of Flagship Pioneering, Pioneering Medicines, are now working to solidify the molecule as a preclinical asset.
“We will deliver a high-quality, derisked preclinical candidate in a shorter timeline than conventional drug discovery efforts,” Frearson said, at which point Pioneering Medicines will take over development.
The new molecule was identified using Logica, a drug discovery solution that Charles River and Valo first launched in April 2022. Logica combines Valo’s artificial-intelligence-driven computational platform, called Opal, with Charles River’s preclinical drug development expertise, the partners said.
While not divulging too many details, we do know that this platform has initially identified a target for "different forms of lupus," according to the release. This disease is primarily treated with off-label drugs or newer meds in the form of GSK's Benlysta and AstraZeneca's Saphnelo. The most common form of the disease is systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), with other forms including lupus nephritis.
There are already other pharmas vying for a bite of the lupus market, including Biogen's experimental litifilimab as well as AbbVie’s blockbuster immunology drug Rinvoq, which is in phase 3 testing for SLE, and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Sotyktu, which presented positive data in SLE at the start of last year.
Logica is not limited to any single disease area, Frearson said, with its current portfolio of projects spanning multiple therapeutic areas. When the Charles River, Valo and Pioneering Medicines collaboration was first announced in February 2023, the partners said the goal was to pursue new drug candidates across a variety of targets.
“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,” Luisa Salter-Cid, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Pioneering Medicines, said in the release. “Logica’s early success in identifying a potential therapy for an autoimmune disease has built confidence in that shared goal.”