BRIEF—Horizon Discovery announces CRISPR collaboration

Horizon Discovery has announced a major collaboration in its mission to exploit the potential for CRISPR technologies to develop single-cell RNA therapies.

The deal, with an unnamed partner referred to as a "major pharmaceutical company" and "global pharma partner", will see Horizon co-developing a novel, cutting edge discovery and development platform for biotech products.

"Pooled CRISPR-Cas9 knockout screens have rapidly become an important tool in novel drug target identification and validation. Horizon continues to innovate in this important area, having launched our CRISPR interference and CRISPR activation screening service in 2017, and through the development of RNAseq-linked CRISPR screening," said Terry Pizzie, Horizon's chief executive.

"The co-development of this tool with a major pharma partner provides a substantive advance to Horizon’s already world-leading screening capabilities, offering our customers cutting-edge solutions not available elsewhere."