Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. (NYSE: CRL) and CHDI Foundation, Inc., today announced an extension of their ongoing drug discovery partnership into the foreseeable future. The organizations began working together in 2005 to expedite therapeutic development for Huntington’s disease (HD), a genetic neurological disorder that causes the progressive dysfunction of nerve cells in the brain. The extension in 2025, marking the 20-year anniversary of the collaboration, will allow more flexible activity across Charles River’s global network of scientific expertise and provide greater integration into CHDI’s programs.

“For two decades, we’ve been proud to be close partners of CHDI,” said Shannon M. Parisotto, Corporate Executive Vice President, Global Discovery & Safety Assessment, Charles River. “They are doing incredible work, tirelessly exploring and progressing options for the treatment of Huntington’s disease. We are excited for the future of research and working collaboratively to bring therapeutics to the families impacted by this disease.”

The contract extension covers multidisciplinary services from across Charles River’s portfolio, including:

• Integrated chemistry, biology, and absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) for small molecule drug discovery
• Stem cell and iPSC-derived neuronal assay development and screening
• High-throughput screening (HTS), high-content and fragment-based screening
• Computational chemistry and drug design
• ADME and pharmacokinetics (PK)
• Protein crystallography and biophysics
• Extensive in vivo pharmacology in HD research models for translational assessment
• Safety pharmacology
• Biomarker discovery and assessment
• (Chemo)Proteomics
• Viral production

Over their 20-year collaboration, Charles River has established and validated tools and methodologies within expert teams to support CHDI’s mission of collaboratively developing therapeutics that will substantially improve the lives of those affected by the disease.

“The Charles River team have become true scientific colleagues, and we highly value the intellectual and technical contributions that they have made across dozens of projects over the course of our two-decade collaboration,” said Robert Pacifici, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, CHDI. “We look forward to further deepening our research collaboration to bring benefit to Huntington’s families as soon as we can.”

Together, Charles River and CHDI have worked on novel potential drug targets, engineered and validated translational research animal models, run large HTS campaigns, generated proof-of-concept molecules, and evaluated the potential efficacy of both small molecule and biologic therapeutic candidates in preclinical models of HD. These cutting-edge approaches have resulted in 15 composition of matter patent applications.

“We have a wonderful global team of highly skilled and knowledgeable scientists who are closely integrated with CHDI’s team,” added David Fischer, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer, Discovery, Charles River. “We all recognize the critical need for effective treatments for HD and until that is a reality, we will continue pushing research forward.”

Additionally, the expertise and assets developed throughout this collaboration have facilitated research within the broader HD drug discovery and development community, which today includes more than 50 pharma and biotech companies.

CHDI has also agreed to share data with Charles River’s learning algorithms, helping to power and inform the industry's largest and most diverse dataset. Charles River is passionate about protecting data, using industry-standard platforms for data sharing, and irreversible data processing methods. Because Charles River’s data models exclude models used for target identification, on-target activity and efficacy profiles related to the target, clients can be assured that their data is used responsibly.

About Charles River

Charles River provides essential products and services to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, government agencies and leading academic institutions around the globe accelerate their research and drug development efforts. Our dedicated employees are focused on providing clients with exactly what they need to improve and expedite the discovery, early-stage development and safe manufacture of new therapies for the patients who need them. To learn more about our unique portfolio and breadth of services, visit www.criver.com.

About CHDI Foundation, Inc.

CHDI Foundation, Inc. is a privately-funded nonprofit biomedical research organization that is exclusively dedicated to collaboratively developing therapeutics that will substantially improve the lives of those affected by Huntington’s disease. As a collaborative enabler, CHDI seeks to bring the right partners together to identify and address critical scientific issues and move drug candidates to clinical evaluation as quickly as possible. Our scientists work closely with a network of more than 700 researchers in academic and industrial laboratories around the world in the pursuit of these novel therapies, providing strategic scientific direction to ensure that our common goals remain in focus. More information about CHDI can be found at www.chdifoundation.org.

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“The Charles River team have become true scientific colleagues, and we highly value the intellectual and technical contributions that they have made across dozens of projects over the course of our two-decade collaboration."