Horizon’s new Cell Bank subscription programme was launched with the intent to seed Horizon’s knockout cell lines more broadly throughout the drug development industry. Since the launch of the programme in Q3 2016 uptake has been robust, with four Cell Bank access licenses closed providing over £0.7m in total revenue at a high margin, and a strong pipeline in place for H1 2017.
X-MAN® cell lines are provided to commercial customers under licenses that require annual renewal. Targets or genes of interest often change as research and drug development programmes progress however, and cell lines that were critical at the early stages of a project may become redundant. Under the new Cell Bank subscription licenses, knockout cell lines (cells where a specific gene is rendered non-functional) can be exchanged twice, effectively allowing 3 cell lines to be accessed under each license as a customer’s research develops. The basic subscription package consists of 20 cell lines, and larger packages up to comprehensive access to our full catalogue of knockout cell lines are available.
Horizon builds genetically-engineered models of disease in the form of cells that customers use to gain knowledge of the genetic drivers of disease and to develop novel drugs or cell therapies targeted at these genetic drivers. The scale of Horizon’s library of engineered X-MAN catalogue cell lines is unequalled, consisting of over 23,000 cell line pairs.
Dr. Darrin Disley, Chief Executive Officer, Horizon Discovery, commented: “The launch of the Cell Bank subscription programme solves one of the main challenges facing commercial customers looking to apply Horizon’s X-MAN cell lines in their programmes. With convincing early success in place and a strong pipeline of additional subscriptions in progress, Horizon is well positioned to drive further high volume, high margin business from our engineered cell line catalogue in 2017.”
About Horizon’s X-MAN Cell Lines:
The X-MAN Cell Line catalogue, at over 23,000 cell line pairs, is to our knowledge the single largest bank of modified human cell lines available. These models help researchers to understand how complex genetic diseases manifest themselves in patients, and can reduce the cost of bringing to market new personalised therapies by streamlining many aspects of drug development including target identification, target validation, assay development, drug screening, lead optimisation and biomarker-driven clinical trial design. The same technology used to generate our off the shelf cell lines can be used to make cell lines on demand for customers.
Glossary:
· Knockout cell line: A cell line in which one or more of the genes in a cell is made inoperative. These cells are used in learning about the biologic function of a gene or its role in response to a therapeutic
· Cell bank: A collection of cell lines
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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
Horizon Discovery Group plc
Darrin Disley, Chief Executive Officer
Richard Vellacott, Chief Financial Officer
Chris Claxton, VP Investor Relations
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 655 580
Consilium Strategic Communications (Financial Media and Investor Relations)
Mary-Jane Elliott / Susan Stuart / Matthew Neal / Melissa Gardiner
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3709 5701
Email: horizon@consilium-comms.com
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