Our Heritage
Horizon Discovery was founded in June 2007 by Chris Torrance, a graduate of the highly-regarded Vogelstein laboratory, the most-cited oncology research group in the world. The company builds on a long-heritage in cancer research and draws on intellectual property and know-how from: the IRCC, University of Torino; Medical School; University of Washington and; The Johns Hopkins University. The focus of this expertise is in the application of novel gene-engineering technology to create accurate and genetically defined ‘isogenic’ cellular-models of human disease - a missing link in the discovery of ‘personalised’ medicines.
Horizon Discovery is the only commercial source of isogenic cell-lines and the company has recently launched three panels of X-MAN patient-relevant isogenic human cancer cell-lines made using the patented GENESIS gene-engineering platform. These panels comprise 90+ genotypes spread across 7 parental cell-lines and are either single- or double knock-in gain-of-function models or knockout loss-of-function models. These human cell-lines, model specific cancer patient populations of high-therapeutic interest, as well as providing matched normal genetic backgrounds for reference.
Such definitive disease vs. normal ‘isogenic’ models has been previously unavailable to drug discovery researchers and will rationalise many aspects of the drug discovery pipeline; from target discovery & validation, drug candidate discovery & optimisation and clinical trial design.