Horizon Discovery has entered into a large-scale licensing agreement with a Japanese medical university for the use of 250 of Horizon’s X-MAN genetically defined, isogenic cell lines from its in vitro disease models.
 
Horizon’s X-MAN cell lines model the disease-causing mutations found in cancer and other diseases. Horizon creates these cell lines using its precision genome-editing GENESIS platform to engineer specific disease-related mutations. These models help researchers understand complex genetic diseases, and can help reduce the development costs for new personalized therapies by streamlining target identification, target validation, assay development, drug screening, lead optimization, and biomarker-driven clinical trial design.
 
Kam Dhaliwal, vice president of sales, Horizon Discovery, said, “This is a very significant deal for Horizon Discovery, covering a large number of cell lines and representing a large investment by the university. We are delighted that our distribution partnership in Japan with Summit Pharmaceuticals International (SPI) is proving so productive. Summit has proven to be extremely effective in opening the Japanese market for Horizon and we anticipate further adoption of our products and services in Japan in the future.”