By Dominic Chopping


Novo Nordisk has entered a collaboration agreement with Valo Health to discover and develop treatments for cardiometabolic diseases such as heart attack, stroke, and diabetes, using human data and artificial intelligence.

The Danish pharmaceutical giant, which this year became Europe's most valuable company, said the deal will use Valo's drug discovery and development platform that uses patient data and AI as well as its human tissue modeling platform to generate new insights and translate them into potential therapeutics.

"Valo's preclinical capabilities enable identification and validation of novel druggable targets, as well as development of drug candidates against these targets, and can help predict compound safety and efficacy," Novo Nordisk said.

In addition to target discovery and validation, the maker of the hit weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy is licensing three preclinical drug discovery programs in cardiovascular diseases discovered and developed by Valo.

Under terms of the deal, Valo will receive an upfront payment and a potential near-term milestone payment totaling $60 million, and is eligible to receive milestone payments of up to $2.7 billion, plus research and development funding and potential royalty payments.


Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

09-25-23 0847ET