Cambridge, UK, 09 August 2011: Horizon Discovery (Horizon), a leading provider of research tools to support the development of personalized medicines, has announced that it has made six appointments to its commercial division, including sales, marketing and business development executives covering the USA, Europe and the Far East. The Company has also announced that it has expanded its premises at the IQ Cambridge Research Park in Cambridge, UK.
Mr Kam Dhaliwal has been appointed as Director of Business Development and takes responsibility for managing the company’s business development efforts. Mr Dhaliwal joins Horizon from Evotec AG, where he was VP Business Development, responsible for growing the Company’s business in Belgium, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Spain and the UK within the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors, as well as academic institutes. Previously he was Head of European Commercial Development for Acumen Bioscience Ltd (a subsidiary of The Technology Partnership). Mr Dhaliwal has an MPhil in Pharmaceutical Microbiology and a BSc in Biomedical Sciences.
In the last year Horizon has grown from 25 to more than 65 FTEs. In order to accommodate its growing team, Horizon has expanded its UK-based premises, moving into a purpose-fitted 20,000 sq. ft. facility on the IQ Cambridge Business Park. The facility will house the company’s precision genome editing, reagents, discovery services and diagnostics divisions and will allow a doubling of headcount to over 130 FTEs.
In recent months, Horizon has announced the securing of some multi-million pound EUFP7 grants, the closing of numerous new customer deals and the achievement of a major milestone with a key pharmaceutical partner, which will release £6m of revenue over four years. The Company is now well positioned to achieve its fourth consecutive year of 100% top-line growth, with H1 2011 revenues 200% higher than H1 2010.
Commenting on the announcement, Dr Darrin M Disley, Executive Chairman of Horizon said: “Horizon continues to grow rapidly based on a high-level of customer demand for our expanding range of products and services. Our leadership position in precision human genome editing using rAAV targeting vectors that enable the insertion, deletion or substitution of any DNA sequence into any target locus in any cell line is the driving force of this growth. Our global network of customers, collaborators and centers of excellence will be better served by this expansion and we look forward to the year ahead with great optimism.”
