Novo Nordisk, Valo Health expand collaboration to discover, develop novel treatments for cardiometabolic diseases

The companies originally partnered in September 2023 in an agreement that allowed for the development of up to 11 drug programmes, primarily focused on cardiovascular disease, through which Valo was eligible to receive up to 2.7 billion US dollars in milestone payments, plus R&D funding and potential royalty payments.

Under the terms of the expanded agreement, Valo is entitled to receive an upfront payment, equity investment, and a potential near-term milestone payment, totalling 190 million dollars, and is now eligible to receive milestone payments for up to 20 drug programmes, an addition of 9 new drug programmes, totalling approximately 4.6 billion dollars, plus R&D funding and potential royalty payments.

The expanded collaboration will continue to leverage the capabilities of Valo’s Opal Computational Platform, as well as key joint capabilities in human data and genetics with Novo Nordisk’s expertise in cardiometabolic diseases.

“We are very pleased with the progress we have made together with Valo during the first year of our collaboration, and we are excited to expand the scope to put a stronger focus on obesity and type 2 diabetes in addition to cardiovascular disease,” said Marcus Schindler, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Novo Nordisk. “We have already begun to realize the potential of combining the capabilities of Valo and Novo Nordisk to advance multiple AI-powered, human-centric programmes, and we believe this partnership will help Novo Nordisk fulfil our ambition to expand the number of new drug programmes we bring to the clinic.”

The collaboration has already led to the identification of several novel targets that may form the basis of differentiated cardiometabolic drug programmes, and the companies are actively working on multiple small molecule preclinical drug discovery programmes.

“We are excited to build off our early progress with Novo Nordisk, a global leader in obesity and diabetes therapeutics, especially given the renaissance moment in the treatment of cardiometabolic diseases. This level of investment is a testament to our close partnership in deploying human-centric artificial intelligence to rapidly discover and develop novel cardiovascular and metabolic disease therapeutics,” said Brian Alexander, CEO of Valo Health and CEO-Partner, Flagship Pioneering. “The partnership fully leverages the Opal Computational Platform by seeking to identify novel therapeutic targets in large real-world patient datasets, validate those targets using human preclinical models, and develop therapeutics against those targets with human-centric AI small molecule design.”

The expanded collaboration allows for a deeper partnership between the two companies, with activities that span the entire drug discovery continuum. Novo Nordisk and Valo plan to continue working closely together to derive novel insights from human genetic and longitudinal patient data at the intersection of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.