Cambridge, UK, and St. Louis, MO, 24th November 2014 – Horizon Discovery Group plc (LSE:HZD), a leading provider of research tools to support translational genomics and the development of personalized medicines, and Adarza BioSystems, Inc., a next generation innovator in label-free, multiplex assays, announced today that they have entered into an exclusive licensing and supply agreement. The agreement gives Horizon the exclusive right to supply services on Adarza’s breakthrough multiplex immunoassay technology, Arrayed Imaging Reflectometry (AIR™). The technology offers a powerful tool for stratification of patients and samples based on very small blood volumes, an increasingly vital step in the development of personalized medicines.
The agreement with Adarza means that Horizon customers will be able to access leading protein biomarker discovery and validation capabilities alongside the broad menu of technology enabled services already available including; in vitro and in vivo gene-editing, phenotypic cell-based assay development, target identification and validation, chemical and biological agent screening, and high throughput drug combination screening. Horizon continues to provide researchers with comprehensive solutions that support and enhance their drug development workflows.
Through this agreement, Horizon gains exclusive rights to offer research services using Adarza’s multiplex immunoassays platform, and in 2015 will launch a portfolio of products capable of detecting between 100 and 400 analytes and further to this will offer custom assay development on the platform.
AIR technology has the ability to detect hundreds and potentially thousands of proteins in a single drop of blood, thereby facilitating all phases of companion diagnostics development from discovery through verification and ultimately into the clinic. By comparison, current multiplex assay systems have difficulty detecting more than 30 analytes in a single sample. AIR technology enables scientists for the first time to quickly and economically interrogate samples for very large sets of putative biomarkers simultaneously, in sample volumes as low as 10ul, and with sensitivities as low as 1pg/ml, opening up new opportunities for longitudinal studies in pre-clinical models and human samples.
Dr Darrin M Disley, Chief Executive Officer of Horizon Discovery Group plc, commented: “The ability to stratify populations that respond to drugs with the aid of blood-based biomarkers is becoming a critical part of developing better and more efficacious therapies. Horizon is committed to remaining at the forefront of high value technological advances that address our customers’ research needs. The addition of AIR technology to our offering supports our growth strategy and is highly complementary to our current portfolio.”
Dr Preston Keller, Vice President of Business Development at Adarza BioSystems, Inc., added: “We are delighted to be working with one of the world’s fastest-growing life science companies dedicated to driving forward the fields of gene editing and translational genomics. The agreement with Horizon validates Adarza’s disruptive technology platform and allows us to leverage Horizon’s world class sales and marketing network to bring the technology to market sooner and much more broadly than we could alone.”
About Horizon Discovery Group plc
Horizon is a revenue-generating life science company supplying research tools to organizations engaged in genomics research and the development of personalized medicines. Horizon has a diverse and international customer base approaching 1,000 organizations across nearly 50 countries, including major pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostic companies as well as leading academic research centers. The Company supplies its products and services into multiple markets, estimated to total in excess of £29 billion by 2015.
Horizon’s core capabilities are built around its proprietary translational genomics platform, GENESIS™, a high-precision and flexible suite of gene editing tools able to alter almost any endogenous gene sequence of human or mammalian cell-lines. Horizon offers almost 2,200 products, almost all of which are based on the application of GENESIS™ to generate cell lines that accurately model the disease-causing mutations found in genetically based diseases. These ‘patients-in-a-test-tube’ are being used by customers to identify the effect of individual or compound genetic mutations on drug activity, patient responsiveness, and resistance, which may lead to the successful prediction of which patient sub-groups will respond to currently available and future drug treatments.
In addition, Horizon provides GENASSIST™ CRISPR and rAAV gene editing tools, custom cell line generation services for research and bioproduction applications, quantitative molecular reference standards, in vivo disease models, contract research and custom screening services, custom shRNA development services and off-the-shelf validated shRNA (through Horizon’s partner Sirion), and haploid cell lines (through Horizon’s partner Haplogen). These latter partnerships provide Horizon with almost 11,000 further products for our customers.
Horizon is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, and is listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market under the ticker “HZD”, for further information please visit: www.horizondiscovery.com
About Adarza BioSystems, Inc.
Adarza, with operations in Rochester, N.Y. and St. Louis, Missouri, is a leading developer and manufacturer of label-free biosensor assays and instruments servicing life science research, drug development and in vitro diagnostics customers. Adarza’s products and services utilize its proprietary Arrayed Imaging ReflectometryTM (“AIRTM”) detection platform that is capable of rapidly identifying and quantifying a series of biological target analyte species in a fluid sample, without chemical labels or complex processing. AIR technology offers key performance benefits in sensitivity, speed, multiplex arrays, sample size, dynamic range, ease of use and industry-leading low cost of use. Adarza products address broad quantitative analyte detection applications, including cancer biomarkers, drug and vaccine development, allergy, immunology and infectious diseases research. For more information, visit www.adarzabio.com
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For further information from Horizon Discovery Group Plc, please contact:
Zyme Communications (Trade and Regional Media)
Katie Odgaard
Tel: +44 (0)7787 502 947
Email: katie.odgaard@zymecommunications.com
Consilium Strategic Communications (Financial Media and Investor Relations)
Amber Bielecka / Mary-Jane Elliott / Jessica Hodgson / Matthew Neal / Laura Thornton
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3709 5701
Email: horizon@consilium-comms.com
Panmure Gordon (UK) Limited (NOMAD)
Corporate Finance: Freddy Crossley / Duncan Monteith / Fred Walsh
Broking: Tom Salvesen
Tel: +44 20 7886 2500
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