Horizon partners on R&D with Rockefeller Uni, Sloan-Kettering, Cornell
The gene editing CRO signed an initial $500,000 (€400,000) work order to carry out single and combination drug screening and in vitro assay development over the next two years.
Horizon will use its cHTS (combination High Throughput Screening) platform and Chalice analytics software to screen thousands of small-molecule drugs, antibodies or proteins in combination to identify synergistic or antagonistic interactions. At the next stage, cellular assays will identify drug target activity.
TDI
The Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute (TDI) is formed of the Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Weill Cornell Medical College. The partnership links academic researchers with drug discovery experts in the biopharma industry to work on translating discoveries into drugs.
TDI is partnered with Takeda, which has provided medicinal chemists and pharmacologists to work on developing small molecules for drug development.
Combination HTS
Horizon expanded its combination High Throughput Screening services last year with the acquisition of Zalicus’s screening business CombinatoRx. Horizon combined assets in a subsidiary, Horizon CombinatoRx Incorporated, which uses the parent company’s gene editing and cell line tech with CombinatoRx’s cell line screening platform.
Horizon has been busy investing elsewhere in recent months. In January it bought Austrian company Haplogen for its chromosome tools which Horizon says can produce cell lines ten times faster than alternative methods, using asymmetric chiral technology.
In December, the company began making CHO (Chinese Hamster Ovary) cell lines following a partnership with a major pharma firm, suspected to be AstraZeneca.
Read Outsourcing-Pharma.com’s exclusive interview with Horizon CEO Darrin Disley here.
