Horizon Discovery Group, a gene-editing company headquartered in Waterbeach, UK, has amended a pre-existing license with ERS Genomics, based in Dublin, Ireland, to include the full commercial rights for the use of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) edited cell lines for GMP biotherapeutics manufacturing.

With the license amendment, Horizon adds the right to use CRISPR-edited cell lines in GMP biomanufacturing. Further, through a recently signed global agreement between CRISPR intellectual property holders, CRISPR Therapeutics, Intellia Therapeutics, Caribou Biosciences, and ERS Genomics, this license now includes consents from all the patent co-owners. The financial terms of the amendment were not disclosed.

To date, Horizon has engaged in 29 cell line evaluations, leading to a total of 10 licenses taken. A further 16 cell line evaluations are currently underway, several of which are expected to conclude within the first quarter of 2017.

Horizon has also entered into a grant-funded two-year collaboration with Solentim, a Dorset, UK-based instrument developer for cell-line development and developer of Cell Metric, a benchtop imaging system, to develop an automated manufacturing platform for the genome editing of mammalian cells. The project is being funded by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, under the Collaborative Research in Manufacturing and Materials scheme for a total of £764,300 ($947,000), of which Horizon will receive £523,000 ($648,000).

Source: Horizon Discovery Group