Horizon Discovery
Ltd. announced a strategic partnership agreement with Promega Corporation. The
partnership centers on the delivery of endogenous gene reporting capabilities
in the form of Promega’s luciferase and HaloTag reporter technologies, using
Horizon’s proprietary homologous recombination-based precision genome editing
technology (rAAV GENESIS).
The scientific
objective of the partnership is to develop next-generation predictive human
disease models, recapitulating genetic mutations exactly as they occur in
patient tumors, thereby enabling the elucidation of protein expression and
protein-protein interactions encoded by those mutations. To date, Horizon has
applied its rAAV gene-editing platform to reconstitute over 370 cancer
mutations and variations in human cell lines that serve as patient-relevant,
predictive in vitro models of genetic
disease.
Additional objective(s) will be to enable the study of
tumor response to anticancer treatments in real time, by offering in vivo xenografts of Horizon’s
tumorigenic engineered isogenic cell lines with incorporated Promega reporter
tags. Preliminary studies have revealed clear images of tumor graft
response to targeted molecular therapies. This
capability adds to drug discovery scientists’ existing toolbox of patient
relevant models to support the development of a greater number of more
efficacious anti-cancer drugs.
Horizon Discovery Ltd., www.horizondiscovery.com
