NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Horizon Discovery said this week that it has licensed exclusive worldwide rights from the University of Washington to a gene engineering technology that is used as part of its Genesis platform.
The Cambridge, UK-based firm said that the Genesis platform is used to create patient-relevant disease models, called X-Man cell lines. The firm has developed more than 100 of these cell models that are intended to help drug researchers understand how cancer manifests itself in real patients and to help in the development of personalized therapeutics, diagnostics, and theranostic tests.
The viral-based gene engineering technology is “absolutely essential to generating X-Man lines efficiently and reproducibly,” the firm said in a statement.
“In 2009, we will disseminate our technology (and the products and services based upon it) to all levels of academic, industrial and clinical research and begin the process of co-opting the support of healthcare and political leaders; critical in implementing changes in how personalized treatments are discovered and administered," said Horizon Discovery CEO Chris Torrance.
Terms of the license were not disclosed.