Horizon Discovery Group plc (LSE:HZD) (Horizon), the international life science company supplying research tools and services that power genomics research and the development of personalized medicines, today announced it has signed a supply and commercialization agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science.

Under the terms of the agreement, Thermo Fisher will market and distribute Horizon’s X-MAN human haploid and diploid isogenic cell line collection and will further offer Horizon’s X-MAN haploid cell line generation service to its worldwide customer base.

The X-MAN cell line range represents an extensive bank of genetically defined human cell lines – models that accurately exhibit disease-causing genetics, and have undergone a high degree of validation and quality control. These models help researchers to understand how complex genetic diseases manifest themselves, and can reduce the cost of bringing to market new personalized therapies by streamlining many aspects of drug development, including target identification, target validation, assay development, drug screening, lead optimization and biomarker-driven clinical trial design.

The X-MAN catalogue includes both diploid (cells with two natural copies of each gene) cell lines and haploid (proprietary cells engineered to have only one copy of each gene) cell lines developed using Horizon’s proprietary precision (rAAV) and high-throughput (HT-CRISPR) genome-editing technologies. Additionally, Horizon offers rapid and low cost on-demand generation of engineered haploid cell lines that for the first time bring these valuable research tools to the 72,000+ research labs studying the basic and applied function of genes and genetic variation.

All of Horizon’s X-MAN cell lines are provided as ‘isogenic pairs’, meaning that each modified cell is provided with a matched control so that when experiments are performed, researchers can attribute differences in experimental results with confidence to the specific genomic modification, which is difficult to do using historical patient-derived cell lines.

Dr. Paul Morrill, President, Products, Horizon Discovery Group plc, commented: “This strategic agreement underscores the value of Horizon’s X-MAN cell line collection and gene editing services, and, in particular, highlights the impact Horizon’s haploid models are already having on the research community, following the acquisition of Haplogen Genomics GmbH in January 2015. Under this agreement, Thermo Fisher will market these products to researchers worldwide using its e-commerce and direct sales channels.”

“Thermo Fisher is committed to providing researchers around the world with the most advanced technologies designed to help them move scientific research forward,” said Lalit Dhir, vice president of Strategy, Portfolio & Business Development at Thermo Fisher Scientific. “Our agreement with Horizon Discovery Group is an example of that commitment to our research customers.”

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