Valo will receive an upfront payment and a potential near-term milestone payment, totalling $60m, and is eligible to receive milestone payments for up to 11 programmes, totalling up to $2.7bn, in addition to R&D funding and potential royalty payments.
Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk and US-based health technology company Valo Health have teamed up to discover and develop novel treatments for cardiometabolic diseases, using AI and human data.
Under the partnership, Valo will receive an upfront payment and potential near-term milestone payment totalling $60m.
The US drugmaker is eligible to receive milestone payments for up to 11 programmes, totalling around $2.7bn, in addition to R&D funding and potential royalty payments.
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Novo Nordisk and Valo will leverage their joint capabilities in human data and genetics with a focus on cardiometabolic diseases, as part of the collaboration.
In addition, Novo Nordisk will license three preclinical programs in cardiovascular diseases discovered and developed by Valo, using the opal computational platform.
Novo Nordisk executive vice president and chief scientific officer Marcus Schindler said: “Artificial Intelligence and machine learning hold the promise to positively impact drug discovery and development, in particular enabling our vision of leveraging human datasets early in the process, which should lead to a better understanding of target biology.
“Valo brings a differentiated and powerful approach to using these technologies on real-world human data to generate new insights and translate them into potential therapeutics for the benefit of patients suffering from cardiometabolic conditions.”
The collaboration will leverage Valo’s opal computational platform and Biowire human tissue modelling platform that speeds up the discovery and development process.
Valo’s opal computational platform is an integrated, end-to-end drug discovery and development platform that builds on high-quality and differentiated human-centric data and purpose-built AI.
The platform is designed to enable a fully integrated approach for targeting and advancing product candidates, from understanding the underlying disease through regulatory approval.
Furthermore, Novo Nordisk and Valo are planning to work together to derive novel insights from human genetic and longitudinal patient data in cardiovascular disease.
Valo CEO and founder David Berry said: “Partnering with Novo Nordisk, a leader in cardiometabolic disease, creates a unique opportunity to continue to deploy our Opal Computational Platform at scale in the discovery and development of novel cardiometabolic therapeutics.
“We are excited to implement the full spectrum of our platform spanning from disease characterisation through clinical development as we aim to deliver new therapeutics to benefit patients living with some of the most prevalent chronic diseases of our time.”