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- Posted Monday April 12, 2010
TGen Drug Development (TD2) partners with Horizon Discovery to offer an integrated personalized medicine service
Alliance aims to define the future of oncology drug
development
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., and Cambridge, U.K. - April 12, 2010 - A
strategic alliance announced today between TGen Drug Development
(TD2) and Horizon Discovery Limited will significantly advance
personalized medicine.
The partnership will create a beginning-to-end solution for
pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to more rationally
design and tailor their drugs to specific patient populations based
on the unique genetic variations that define a given disease.
TD2 will use Horizon's panel of more than 200 genetically-defined
human isogenic cell-lines - designed to accurately mirror cancer
patient genetics - in its comprehensive pre-clinical service as a
prelude to performing selected in-house clinical trials. This will
provide clients with a fully integrated drug discovery service that
will accelerate the isolation and optimization of appropriately
targeted therapeutic agents and attain their rapid market approval.
And it will save time and money in the development of more
effective cancer treatments.
"The future of oncology drug development will require us to predict
which patients will respond to what drug," said Dr. Stephen Gately,
TD2's President and Chief Scientific Officer, referring to the goal
of personalized medicine - treating patients with drugs tailor-made
for their specific diseases.
"This partnership is the engine that will actually make this work
and allow for the design of shorter and less-costly clinical trials
that enroll the patients most likely to respond to a given drug,"
Gately said.
Today's agreement between TD2 and Horizon builds on another
agreement announced Feb. 2 between Horizon and TD2's parent
organization, the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen),
to develop new human disease models for TGen's cancer
research.
"Working with TD2 will enable us to broaden the impact of our
GENESIS and X-MAN technologies in the quest for therapies that
target the genetic causes of cancer in each patient's tumor," said
Dr. Chris Torrance, CEO of Horizon, based in Cambridge, U.K.
Horizon's new GENESIS technology allow researchers, for the first
time, to routinely and precisely alter any specific gene or genomic
location in a human cell. This would allow, for example, the
ability to take a non-cancerous cell and mutate it to create a
cancerous cell that matches the mutation in a given patient-s
tumor. Researchers then can test potential treatments on the cell
pairs to define which specific mutation status confers the maximal
drug activity. These engineered lines and their matched controls
can be rapidly deployed in target validation, drug screening,
patient profiling, drug resistance and drug re-profiling.
TD2 also has the expertise and capabilities to perform de novo
high-throughput synthetic lethal screens that targets the nearly
3-billion-letter human genome, the DNA blueprint that makes us who
we are. This will enable users to define the next generation of
patient-relevant drug targets. Along with TD2's world-class
preclinical, clinical and regulatory affairs expertise, it will
ensure that client's targets and drugs will move quickly from the
laboratory bench to the patient bedside.
TD2 will provide high-throughput screening capabilities, study
execution and business marketing, and may incorporate new service
offerings that emerge from its affiliated organizations, TGen and
the Van Andel Research Institute.
Horizon through its subsidiary Horizon Discovery Services will
support the pre-clinical offerings with bespoke 2D and 3D assay
formats that closely mimic the in vivo phenotype being driven by
primary and secondary genetic cancer mutations. A key part of
identifying the correct phenotype is the ability to replicate the
context of the mutation in the actual tumour
microenvironment.
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About Horizon Discovery
Horizon Discovery is a translational genomics and personalized
medicine company founded in June 2007 and is headquartered at IQ
Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., and with additional research
laboratories in Torino, Italy. Horizon's goal is to convert new
information on the genetic causes of cancer into laboratory models
that will facilitate the discovery of drugs that target these
defects. Central to this aim is Horizon Discovery's offering of
X-MAN isogenic cell-lines, which represent accurate models of
defined cancer patient populations and their matched normal genetic
backgrounds - a missing link in the rational and efficient
development of novel targeted anti-cancer agents. These X-MAN
models are now being used to speed up and rationalize every phase
of the drug development process; from the discovery of cancer
targets and biomarkers to the design of more rational clinical
trials based around the patients most likely to respond.
Press Contact:
Dr. Darrin M. Disley
+44 (0)1223 303049 or +44 (0)7786 133893
www.horizondiscovery.com
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About TD2
TGen Drug Development (TD2), a wholly owned subsidiary of the
Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), is a 501(c) 3
non-profit organization. TD2 provides innovative services for
oncology focused biopharmaceutical companies using a dedicated team
of professionals with broad experience and understanding in drug
development. TD2 is uniquely positioned to support the need for
improved and accelerated development of new chemical entities
(NCE's) for life-threatening diseases. TD2 uses a unique
combination of experience gained through its contract research
organization business, and an integrated suite of proprietary and
non-proprietary tools, preclinical study execution, regulatory
affairs assistance, clinical trial design and management, and drug
development experts to successfully move therapeutics towards
regulatory approval. TD2 is dedicated to reducing the risks and
uncertainty inherent in the drug development process. For more
information, visit www.td2.org.
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About TGen
The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) is a Phoenix,
Arizona-based non-profit organization dedicated to conducting
groundbreaking research with life changing results. Research at
TGen is focused on helping patients with diseases such as cancer,
neurological disorders and diabetes. TGen is on the cutting edge of
translational research where investigators are able to unravel the
genetic components of common and complex diseases. Working with
collaborators in the scientific and medical communities, TGen
believes it can make a substantial contribution to the efficiency
and effectiveness of the translational process. TGen is affiliated
with the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
For more information, visit: www.tgen.org.
Press Contact:
Steve Yozwiak
TGen Senior Science Writer
602-343-8704
[email protected]
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