Horizon Discovery Ltd (Horizon), a leading provider of research tools to support the development of personalized medicines, has signed a research service collaboration agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim.

Horizon will support Boehringer Ingelheim’s oncology programs by using its Discovery Toolbox for research projects and profiling of compounds at the hit-to-lead, lead optimization and pre-clinical stages to elucidate their anti-cancer properties and help guide drug discovery programmes.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Horizon will evaluate compounds across a broad panel of X-MAN isogenic models and selected 2D/3D phenotypic assays, and will provide an FTE and access to its custom cell line generation services to support the programmes.

Horizon will also apply its proprietary genome editing technology GENESIS to develop human isogenic disease model cell lines, according to Boehringer Ingelheim’s specifications. Using GENESIS, Horizon is able to alter any endogenous gene sequence of human or mammalian cell lines quickly, reliably and without unwanted and confounding genotypes and/or phenotypes. The resulting high quality cell lines accurately model the disease-causing mutations found in patients.

Kam Dhaliwal, vice president of sales, Horizon, said “We are delighted that Boehringer Ingelheim has selected Horizon as a partner for its drug discovery programmes, in recognition of the value our X-MAN cell lines and drug discovery services can add to the search for novel treatments for cancer."