Charles River (CRL) Announces Partnership With Related Sciences
Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. CRL recently announced a multi-program collaboration agreement with Related Sciences, a data science-driven drug discovery firm. Through this partnership, Logica — the combined offering of Charles River and Valo Health — will be applied across several previously undrugged targets in Related Sciences’ portfolio.
The latest development bodes well for the company to deploy Logica in the search for first-in-class therapeutics.
About Logica
Launched in 2022, Logica is an AI-powered drug solution that directly translates clients’ biological insights into optimized preclinical assets. The platform leverages Valo’s AI-powered Opal Computational Platform and Charles River’s leading preclinical expertise, providing clients with transformed drug discovery, with a single integrated offering seamlessly translating targets into candidate nominations.
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Logica is offered as a fully managed, risk-sharing model, with most of the client cost tied to success. It utilizes industry-leading predictive models, chemical designs and synthesis capabilities, DNA-encoded libraries, in silico high-throughput screening from Valo’s Opal Computational Platform as well as CRL’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.
News in Detail
Under the collaboration, Related Sciences will work closely with the Charles River and Valo Health teams to deploy Logica to discover valuable new medicines to address key unmet needs across a range of disease areas, including cancer immunotherapy, autoimmunity and inflammatory diseases.
With AI/machine learning-enabled in silico discovery, high-powered DNA-encoded libraries and traditional screening techniques incorporated into the platform, Logica is competent to accelerate the drug discovery and development pipeline, transforming a target into a candidate in just more than two years.
Industry Prospects
Per a Research report, the global AI in drug discovery market size was valued at $1.1 billion in 2022 and is expected to witness a compound annual growth rate of 29.6% by 2030.
A Focus on Strategic Collaborations
CRL continues to broaden the scope of products and services across the drug discovery and non-clinical development continuum through focused acquisitions and partnerships. Earlier in 2023, the company entered into a multi-program agreement with Pioneering Medicines — a strategic initiative of Flagship Pioneering — via which Pioneering Medicines will deploy Logica’s uniquely integrated AI platform across a portfolio of targets to create optimized small molecules that lead to novel therapies for unmet medical needs.
Last month, Charles River announced a manufacturing collaboration with Fondazione Telethon to produce High-Quality plasmid DNA for Fondazione Telethon’s lentivirus for ex vivo gene therapy.
Price Performance
In the past six months, Charles River shares have increased 7.3% against the industry’s fall of 5.7%.
Zacks Rank and Key Picks
Charles River carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Some better-ranked stocks in the broader medical space are Haemonetics HAE, Quanterix QTRX and SiBone SIBN, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Haemonetics’ stock has risen 15.8% in the past year. Earnings estimates for Haemonetics have increased from $3.56 to $3.74 in 2023 and $3.96 to $4.07 in 2024 in the past 30 days.
HAE’s earnings beat estimates in each of the trailing four quarters, delivering an average surprise of 19.39%. In the last reported quarter, it posted an earnings surprise of 38.16%.
Estimates for Quanterix’s 2023 loss per share have narrowed from $1.19 to 97 cents in the past 30 days. Shares of the company have increased 119.6% in the past year against the industry’s decline of 4.2 %.
QTRX’s earnings beat estimates in each of the trailing four quarters, delivering an average surprise of 30.39%. In the last reported quarter, it posted an earnings surprise of 55.56%.
Estimates for SiBone’s 2023 loss have narrowed from $1.42 to $1.27 per share in the past 30 days. Shares of the company have increased 9.3% in the past year against the industry’s fall of 5.1%.
SIBN’s earnings beat estimates in all the trailing four quarters, the average surprise being 20.37%. In the last reported quarter, SiBone delivered an earnings surprise of 26.83%.
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