Horizon Discovery CEO Darrin Disley wins 'Entrepreneur of the Year' award

Horizon Discovery Group plc, the international life science company supplying research tools and services to organisations engaged in genomics research and the development of personalised medicines, announced today that the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Darrin Disley, has been awarded Entrepreneur of the Year at last night’s (Wednesday's) Quoted Company Awards 2015 in London.

 

The Quoted Company Awards, now in its 11th year, recognizes the achievements of quoted companies listed outside of the FTSE 350 and their key directors.

Dr Disley has overseen a transformational year for Horizon, during which the company transitioned from a private UK life science business employing 85 staff on a single 18,000 sq. ft. site in Cambridge to a publically-listed international life science group employing 200 staff across over 85,000 sq. ft. of facilities located in the UK, Austria and the United States.

Under his leadership, Horizon listed on AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in March 2014, when the company was able to raise £68.6m, nearly three times the initial target.  Since the IPO, Dr.Disley has driven Horizon’s growth through a series of targeted acquisitions into high value areas of the personalized medicines space: CombinatoRx based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; SAGE Labs based in St Louis, Missouri and Boyertown, Pennsylvania; and most recently Haplogen Genomics located in Vienna, Austria.  He has also expanded the suite of products and services available to Horizon’s customers, bolstered the company’s intellectual property position, and delivered high-value contracts with leading life science companies, all contributing to growing revenues and creating shareholder value.

Dr Disley is also an active entrepreneur and leader in the life science community outside of his role at Horizon, where he invests and provides guidance and mentoring to help develop promising young companies.  He is also a strong advocate of the UK Life Sciences Sector and is a frequent speaker on the topic.

Dr Darrin M. Disley, Chief Executive Officer of Horizon Discovery, commented: “To be recognized as an innovator and leader by my peers is a tremendous honor.  This has been an incredibly dynamic and exciting year for me and my colleagues at Horizon, and it is a testament to them that we have been able to be as successful as we have and to be as well positioned as we are for the future.”


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 well in excess of 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 14,000 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 and custom shRNA development services and off-the-shelf validated shRNA (through Horizon’s partner Sirion).

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

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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
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3709 5701
Email: horizon@consilium-comms.com
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