Horizon will develop a panel of human isogenic cell models that recapitulate key drug sensitivity and resistance mechanisms in cancer patients.
These will be used to develop DxS's Therascreen range of clinical diagnostic kits.
Using a proprietary gene-engineering technology called Genesis, Horizon will generate a range of 'X-Man' (Mutant And Normal) cell-lines as a source of high-quality, genetically-defined human DNA, which will be specifically used to assess the performance of DxS's Therascreen: K-RAS Mutation Kits.
These kits enable clinicians to ascertain which patients will respond to anti-EGFR targeted colorectal cancer treatments, including Erbitux and Vectibix based on K-RAS mutation status.
Around 40 per cent of colorectal patients test positive for K-RAS mutations (a finding that was the subject of a seminal publication by Horizon co-founder Prof Alberto Bardelli in Cancer Research in March 2007); the patients most likely to respond to the anti-EGFR therapies are found in the remaining 60 per cent (K-RAS wild type).
This has led to a decision by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) to make the testing of all colon cancer patients for these resistance genes compulsory before EGFR-targeted drugs can be prescribed.
The American Society of Clinical Oncologists (ASCO) is petitioning for the same guidelines to be adopted in the US.
Dr Chris Torrance, chief executive officer of Horizon, said: 'Our initial focus will be on evaluating new diagnostic kits from DxS using isogenic human mutant versus normal DNA-controls, which we feel represent a gold-standard means of bench-marking companion diagnostics where mutations often need to be detected in humans within a background of excess isogenic normal DNA.'
