Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. and Aitia, a pioneer in Causal AI and Digital Twins, have entered into a strategic agreement, granting Aitia access to Logica™—Charles River's Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered drug solution platform. This collaboration aims to optimize the discovery and early development of multiple therapeutic programs focusing on neurodegenerative diseases and oncology.
As per the terms of the agreement, Aitia will integrate Logica into its portfolio of novel drug targets, with the goal of advancing drug candidates for neurological indications such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases, as well as cancers including prostate cancer and multiple myeloma. The World Health Organization reports that globally, Alzheimer's disease affects 33 million people, Parkinson's disease impacts 8.5 million, and Huntington's disease affects approximately 1 in 10,000 individuals. With no known cures for these diseases and their prevalence increasing annually, the collaboration aims to address significant therapeutic challenges. In the field of oncology, where there are around 1.4 million new cases of prostate cancer and 160,000 new cases of multiple myeloma reported each year, the partnership seeks to confront unique challenges associated with acquired resistance to novel therapies and varying rates of overall survival.
In addition, Charles River and Aitia have entered into a strategic partnership focused on developing a patient-derived xenograft (PDX) Digital Twin to predict optimal tumor models for in vivo oncology research. This collaboration will combine Charles River's well-characterized, disease-relevant PDX data and expertise with Aitia's cutting-edge Digital Twin technology. As part of this partnership, Charles River has made an equity investment in Aitia.
Digital Twins play a pivotal role in drug discovery, enabling accurate simulations of gene and protein knockdowns at the individual patient level and facilitating the discovery and genetic validation of novel drug targets. The collaboration also aims to apply the concept to individual tumor types, designing more targeted preclinical studies for oncology research. Digital Twins simulate disease progression and drug response, aiding in the discovery of biomarkers for better therapy selection and effective combination therapies.
Logica, launched in 2022 by Charles River and Valo Health, combines AI-powered Valo Opal Computational Platform™ and Charles River's preclinical expertise to offer clients a unified target-to-candidate drug discovery solution. Logica is provided as a fully managed, risk-sharing model, aligning most of the client's costs with project success.
This collaboration builds on previous agreements where Charles River deployed Logica across various targets with the goal of creating optimized small molecules for novel therapies. The alliance demonstrates the strength of Logica as an integrated AI program, leveraging industry-leading predictive models, chemical design and synthesis capabilities, DNA-encoded libraries, in silico high throughput screening, and Charles River's expertise in discovery optimization, ultimately contributing to a computation-powered, unified drug discovery offering.
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