Horizon Discovery (Horizon) today announced it has signed a commercial agreement with Millenium Pharmaceuticals Incorporated to broadly evaluate its X-MAN technology. X-MAN ‘Mutant And Normal’ human isogenic cell-lines are the first genetically-defined in vitro models of human cancer and their matched normal cell-types, that help accelerate and rationalize the discovery of novel ‘personalised’ medicines and their optimal assessment in clinical trials.
The agreement covers an eight month evaluation of a panel of seven X-MAN cell lines; including for the first time a set of double cancer-gene ‘knock-in’ lines designed to evaluate known mechanisms of patient resistance to targeted agents. The lines under evaluation represent model genotypes of interest to Millenium; who will further characterize the lines and test known targeted agents against these genotypes as well as internally developed compounds. “
Chris Torrance, CEO of Horizon says “it is our aim to get our novel ‘patient-relevant’ X-MAN cancer models rapidly into the real world drug discovery arena and signing up Millenium to a comprehensive and expandable pilot programme will generate additional data on the ability of X-MAN cell lines to find novel ‘personalised’ cancer therapies” Millenium will pay Horizon a six-figure fee and share key data-sets during the course of the evaluation period which will begin in October 2008.
