History
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Horizon was founded in July 2007 by Dr Chris Torrance and Professor Alberto Bardelli to commercialize the seminal rAAV gene targeting inventions of Professor David Russell of the University of Washington.
Intellectual property
The company builds on a long heritage in gene-engineering, cancer research and translational medicine and has in-licensed intellectual property and know-how from: the University of Washington; the Johns Hopkins University;the University of Minnesota and; the Department of Oncological Sciences at the University of Torino Medical School.
Publications
Over 400 publications relating to the use of X-MAN cell line pair’s generated using GENESIS have been made by Horizon founders, scientific advisers, technology licensors and research collaborators. The abstracts for these publications in such leading peer-reviewed journals as; Science, Nature, Nature Biotech., PNAS, Cancer Cell, Cancer Research, The Journal of American Medical Association and The Journal of Clinical Oncology can be found in the reference library section of this web-site.
Recent publications by Horizon's scientific partners (e.g. Di Nicolantonio et al., December 2008, Ashworth et al., EMBO Mol Med. September 2009, Ho Park et al., January 2009 and De Roock et al., November 2010) have exemplified the power of X-MAN models to predict which patient sub-groups may respond to currently-available or future drug treatments.
Key milestones
Since foundation, Horizon Discovery’s key achievements include:
£6.25M of financing from premier investor group including DFJ Esprit, Genentech and Roche Venture Fund. full story
Acquisition of Hypoxium Ltd, to form Horizon Discovery Services. full story
Alliances with thirty academic collaborators including ICR (Ashworth Lab) full story, Sanger Institute full story and The Translational Genomics Institute (TGen). full story
Securing £2M share of European Framework grants, including; PREDICT full story and INSIGHT. full story
Seminal publications by Professor Alberto Bardelli (Horizon co-founder) in the Journal of Cancer Research (March 2007), the Journal of Clinical Oncology (October 2008) and Journal of The American Medical Association (October 2010) detailing a retrospective analysis of colon cancer patients that has led the EMEA and FDA to mandate testing for the presence or absence of ‘mutant KRAS before the blockbuster anti-EGFR targeted agents Erbitux and Vectibix are prescribed as front-line treatment to colorectal cancer patients.
Awards including; Medical Futures Innovation Awards for Best Cancer Drug Discovery Technology and Best Business (2008) full story, UK iaward for Best Technology Start-Up (2009) and Company of the Year (2009) full story, East of England Killer Technology award (2009), East of England Young Compoany of the Year award (2010), and Cambridge Phenomenon Bioscience Company of the Future award (2010). full story
Commercial agreements with most of the major pharmaceutical and biotech companies and academic institutions.
For further information on our achievements, please visit our news page.
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