- Strategic partnership includes co-development of
patient-derived xenograft (PDX) Digital Twins for in vivo
oncology research
- Charles River to make an
equity investment in Aitia as part of the agreement
WILMINGTON, Mass. and SOMERVILLE, Mass., Nov. 13,
2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Charles River Laboratories
International, Inc. (NYSE: CRL) and Aitia, a leader in the
application of Causal AI and Digital Twins, today announced a
strategic agreement that gives Aitia access to Logica™,
Charles River's Artificial
Intelligence (AI) powered drug solution platform, for the optimized
discovery and early development of multiple therapeutic programs
for neurodegenerative disease and oncology.
Under the terms of the agreement, Aitia will deploy Logica
across their portfolio of novel drug targets with the aim of
creating and advancing drug candidates for neurological
indications, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases and cancers, including
prostate cancer and multiple myeloma. According to the World Health
Organization (WHO), Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common form
of dementia, affects 33 million people globally, while Parkinson's
disease (PD) impacts 8.5 million, and it is estimated that
Huntington's disease (HD) affects
approximatively 1 in 10,000 people worldwide. There are currently
no known cures for these diseases, and the prevalence of all three
diseases rises year-over-year. In the field of oncology, there are
approximately 1.4 million new cases of prostate cancer and 160,000
new cases of multiple myeloma reported globally each year. Each
cancer presents unique challenges with acquired resistance to novel
therapies and corresponding rates of overall survival.
"Unraveling the complex genetic and molecular circuitry of
neurodegenerative disorders is critical to the discovery of
treatments that significantly slow or reverse these devastating
diseases," said Colin Hill, Chief
Executive Officer and Co-founder of Aitia. "I do not believe we
will get there without the insights from our Digital Twins, which
now combined with the advantages of Logica, positions Aitia to
rapidly translate our discoveries into novel drug candidates. We
are excited to join forces with Charles
River, leveraging their decades of industry expertise in
research to fuel our R&D efforts."
"Combining Aitia's Digital Twins with Logica's next-generation
solution stands to transform the discovery and development of novel
therapeutics for neurological diseases and oncology," said
Professor Julie Frearson, Ph.D.,
Corporate Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer,
Charles River. "The research
landscape for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's has moved slowly in recent years,
and we are excited for the impact that this combined AI solution
can deliver to patients."
Digital Twins: Increasing Translation Through
Data
Additionally, Charles
River and Aitia have signed a strategic partnership
agreement, focused on the development of a patient-derived
xenograft (PDX) Digital Twin to predict the best tumor models for
in vivo oncology research. The partnership will combine
Charles River's robust,
fully-characterized, disease-relevant PDX data and expertise with
Aitia's industry-leading Digital Twin technology to develop PDX
Digital Twins in several cancer types. As part of the partnership,
Charles River has made an equity
investment in Aitia.
In drug discovery, Digital Twins enable the accurate simulation
of gene and protein knockdowns at the individual patient level
across patient cohorts to discover and genetically validate novel
drug targets. This concept can be applied in a similar way to
individual tumor types to design more targeted preclinical studies
for oncology research. Digital Twins enable the simulation of
disease progression and drug response for existing drug candidates
to discover biomarkers to better select existing therapies and
effective combination therapies.
The Strength of Logica, an Integrated AI
Program
In 2022, Charles
River and Valo Health launched Logica, leveraging the
AI-powered Valo 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 is offered as a fully managed, risk-sharing
model, with most of the client's cost tied to success.
"Logica has optimized drug discovery," said Emilio Cordova, Executive Director, Logica.
"Combining laboratory infrastructure, expert drug hunters, and
large-scale compute capabilities, Logica eliminates whitespace and
rapidly delivers results."
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.
Last year, Charles River and
Flagship's Pioneering Medicines announced an agreement to deploy
Logica across a portfolio of targets with the aim of creating
optimized small molecules that lead to novel therapies for unmet
medical needs. More recently, Charles
River and Related Sciences announced a multi-program
collaboration to apply Logica across several previously undrugged
targets.
About Aitia
Aitia is the leader in the development and application of Causal AI
and Digital Twins to discover the next generation of therapies for
neurodegenerative diseases and oncology. By leveraging the
convergence of multi-omic patient data, high-performance computing,
and causal learning and AI, Aitia is revealing the hidden circuitry
of human biology to identify novel targets driving disease and
focused patient recruitment for clinical development. Aitia has
translated those insights into its Gemini Digital Twins
(computational representations of disease), which the company is
using to discover new breakthrough therapies. Aitia's partners
include six of the top ten pharmaceutical companies, leading
academic research and medical centers, medical societies, leading
multi-omic data companies, and patient advocacy groups globally.
For more information, please visit www.aitiabio.com.
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 AI-driven
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 costs, time, and failure rates. 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, and New York, NY. 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.
Contacts
Charles River Investor Contact:
Todd Spencer
Corporate Vice President, Investor Relations
+1-781-222-6455
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:
Kate Clayton
Associate Director, Corporate Communications
kclayton@valohealth.com
Aitia Media Contact:
Zena
Sfeir
Vice President, Marketing
+1-617-374-2300
zsfeir@aitiabio.com
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SOURCE Aitia