18 Feb 2015 07:00
RNS RELEASE
18th February 2015
Horizon Discovery Group plc, Centre for Process Innovation and University of Manchester Awarded £1.67M Innovate UK Funding
Consortium to receive funding to develop enhanced biomanufacturing platformsbased on the Company's CHO cell line and gene editing platform
Cambridge, UK, 18th February 2015: Horizon Discovery Group plc (LSE:HZD) (Horizon), a leading provider of research tools to support translational genomics and the development of personalized medicines, announced today that together with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), a UK-based technology innovation center and part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, and Prof. Alan Dickson, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, they have been selected to receive a funding award of £1.67M (approximately $2.56M USD). The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) will provide £422K in funding, and the remainder will be from the UK's innovation agency, Innovate UK. Horizon will receive up to £747,000 (approximately $1,146,000 USD) which will be deployed within research performed in its Bioproduction business. The funding is awarded under Innovate UK's new 'Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst' scheme.
This funding will support the development of a commercially valuable enhancement to Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell lines, critical tools for biomanufacturing of high value biopharmaceuticals.
The project aims to develop a suite of engineered CHO cell lines containing a range of modifications designed to control and improve metabolic performance of these cells for the production of biological medicines. By focusing on combinatorial gene editing, the consortium aims to generate robust phenotypes, which will not only enhance understanding of the CHO expression platform, but will ultimately lead to successful industrial translation. The project is designed to decrease the risk associated with the introduction of high levels of innovation in cell line engineering, while establishing a platform that can be made broadly accessible across the biopharmaceutical industry, in the UK and beyond.
Horizon's gene editing platform will be used to manipulate pathways identified and subsequently tested by Manchester University to generate proof of concept. The performance of novel genotypes will be assessed in fermentors and scaled-up to 'manufacture-ready' processes at the CPI and its National Biologics Manufacturing Centre (NBMC) business unit, to ensure that project outputs are translatable into the manufacturing setting and outcomes are widely disseminated.
Brian Burke, Business Development Director, Horizon, commented: "Cell line development through targeted gene editing will be critical in delivering the next generation of biological medicines. This funding award from Innovate UK will enable the development of an engineered CHO cell line toolkit that will drive new bioprocessing solutions beyond the term of the project, giving the bioprocessing community a foundation upon which further improvements in cell line systems can be built."
Jonathan RF Robinson, Head of Business Development, NBMC: "CPI Biologics has been established to help companies develop innovative process and analytical technologies to enable the cost effective manufacture of novel therapeutic products. We see this project as a key enabler in meeting the current and future needs of the biologics industry and are delighted to be collaborating with Horizon and Prof. Alan Dickson."
Prof. Alan Dickson, University of Manchester, said: "Our research focuses on increased molecular understanding of industrially-relevant mammalian cell expression systems and how such information can be used to enhance the commercial viability of bioprocessing. Partnering with Horizon and the CPI enables us to take this research to the next stage, with the aim of improving bioprocesses for application in industry. We are excited to see where it will lead."
ENDS
Notes to Editors
For further information from Horizon Discovery Group plc, please contact:
Consilium Strategic Communications (Financial Media and Investor Relations)
Amber Bielecka / Mary-Jane Elliott / Jessica Hodgson / Matthew Neal
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3709 5701
Email: horizon@consilium-comms.com
Zyme Communications (Trade and Regional Media)
Katie Odgaard
Tel: +44 (0)7787 502 947
Email: katie.odgaard@zymecommunications.com
Panmure Gordon (UK) Limited (NOMAD)
Corporate Finance: Freddy Crossley / Duncan Monteith / Fred Walsh
Broking: Tom Salvesen
Tel: +44 20 7886 2500
About Horizon Discovery Group plc www.horizondiscovery.com/
Horizon is a revenue-generating life science company supplying research tools to organizations engaged in genomics research and the development of personalized medicines. Horizon has a diverse and international customer base of over 1,000 organizations across nearly 50 countries, including major pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostic companies as well as leading academic research centers. The Company supplies its products and services into multiple markets, estimated to total in excess of £29 billion by 2015.
Horizon's core capabilities are built around its proprietary translational genomics platform, a high-precision and flexible suite of gene editing tools able to alter almost any endogenous gene sequence of human or mammalian cell-lines. Horizon offers almost 14,000 products, almost all of which are based on the application of gene editing to generate cell lines that accurately model the disease-causing mutations found in genetically based diseases. These 'patients-in-a-test-tube' are being used by customers to identify the effect of individual or compound genetic mutations on drug activity, patient responsiveness, and resistance, which may lead to the successful prediction of which patient sub-groups will respond to currently available and future drug treatments.
In addition, Horizon provides GENASSIST™ CRISPR and rAAV gene editing tools, custom cell line generation services for research and bioproduction applications, quantitative molecular reference standards, in vivo disease models, contract research and custom screening services and custom shRNA development services and off-the-shelf validated shRNA (through Horizon's partner Sirion).
Horizon is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, and is listed on the London Stock Exchange's AIM market under the ticker "HZD", for further information please visit: www.horizondiscovery.com.
About Horizon's Bioproduction business
Horizon Bioproduction, part of Horizon Discovery Group plc, is a leading provider of precision engineered off the shelf and custom CHO cell lines. The CHO Source platform delivers a fully engineered and characterized host cell line, ideally suited to the manufacture of recombinant protein therapeutics.
Protein therapeutics represent a significant share of the top 50 drugs globally and are increasingly present in developmental pipelines. The provision and licensing of bioproduction cells for their manufacture, however, can be cost prohibitive especially for smaller organizations, and are often tied to long-term revenue-based licensing terms. Horizon advocates access to state of the art bioproduction cell lines for companies of all sizes, enabling increased efficiency and decreased production costs for any organization with ambitions in the biotherapeutic marketplace, including small to medium biotechs and CMOs.
About CPI
The Centre for Process Innovation is a UK-based technology innovation centre and part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult. We use applied knowledge in science and engineering combined with state of the art development facilities to enable our clients to develop, prove, prototype and scale up the next generation of products and processes.
Our open innovation model enables clients to develop products and prove processes with minimal risk. We provide assets and expertise so our customers can demonstrate the process before investing substantial amounts of money in capital equipment and training. New products and processes can be shown to be feasible; on paper, in the lab and in the plant before being manufactured at an industrial scale.
By utilising our proven assets and expertise companies can take their products and processes to market faster. There is no down time in production as all of the process development is completed offsite and our technology transfer and engineering teams can help companies to transfer the product or process into full scale production at speed.
About Innovate UK
Innovate UK is the new name for the Technology Strategy Board - the UK's innovation agency. Taking a new idea to market is a challenge. Innovate UK funds, supports and connects innovative businesses through a unique mix of people and programmes to accelerate sustainable economic growth. For further information visit https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/innovate-uk
About Innovate UK Catalysts
Catalysts are run jointly by Innovate UK and the Research Councils. A Catalyst is a form of research and development funding which focuses on a specific priority area and aims to help take projects from research to as close to commercial viability as possible. The Catalyst model supports projects in priority areas where the UK research base has a leading position and where there is clear commercial potential. Current Catalysts include: Biomedical Catalyst, Agri-tech Catalyst and the Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst. For more details please visit: https://www.gov.uk/innovation-get-details-about-innovate-uk-funding-competitions#catalysts