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Horizon to Find Drug Candidates for EU Stem Cell Consortium

June 16, 2008

Horizon to Find Drug Candidates for EU Stem Cell ConsortiumHorizon to Find Drug Candidates for EU Stem Cell ConsortiumHorizon Discovery (Horizon) today announced it has signed a six figure (€) commercial discovery services contract with the Migrating Cancer Stem Cell’s Framework-6 consortium, headed by Prof. Riccardo Fodde from the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, The Netherlands..

The 12 month program will see Horizon screen a compound library for agents that selectively kill cell-types harboring genes or pathways that are found to be activated in cancer stem cells. The focus will be on the mutant PI3K and β-catenin genotypes as pathways that have been well characterized to have a major influence over cancer cell migration, metastasis, cell-viability and drug resistance – all primary hallmarks of the cancer stem cell compartment.

Screens will be performed on a panel of human cancer cell-lines produced using Horizons proprietary gene engineering technology ‘GENESIS’. This technique allows the creation of human cell-line pairs harboring a specific mutated cancer allele versus a matched isogenic normal genetic background.

The research program began on June 9th 2008.

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