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Agreement gives Horizon exclusive right to supply services on Adarza’s multiplex label-free immunoassay technology

Horizon Discovery Group plc (LSE:HZD), a leading provider of research tools to support translational genomics and the development of personalized medicines, and Adarza BioSystems, Inc., a next generation innovator in label-free, multiplex assays, announced today that they have entered into an exclusive licensing and supply agreement. The agreement gives Horizon the exclusive right to supply services on Adarza’s breakthrough multiplex immunoassay technology, Arrayed Imaging Reflectometry (AIR™). The technology offers a powerful tool for stratification of patients and samples based on very small blood volumes, an increasingly vital step in the development of personalized medicines.

The agreement with Adarza means that Horizon customers will be able to access leading protein biomarker discovery and validation capabilities alongside the broad menu of technology enabled services already available including; in vitro and in vivo gene-editing, phenotypic cell-based assay development, target identification and validation, chemical and biological agent screening, and high throughput drug combination screening. Horizon continues to provide researchers with comprehensive solutions that support and enhance their drug development workflows. 

Through this agreement, Horizon gains exclusive rights to offer research services using Adarza’s multiplex immunoassays platform, and in 2015 will launch a portfolio of products capable of detecting between 100 and 400 analytes and further to this will offer custom assay development on the platform.   

AIR technology has the ability to detect hundreds and potentially thousands of proteins in a single drop of blood, thereby facilitating all phases of companion diagnostics development from discovery through verification and ultimately into the clinic. By comparison, current multiplex assay systems have difficulty detecting more than 30 analytes in a single sample.  AIR technology enables scientists for the first time to quickly and economically interrogate samples for very large sets of putative biomarkers simultaneously, in sample volumes as low as 10ul, and with sensitivities as low as 1pg/ml, opening up new opportunities for longitudinal studies in pre-clinical models and human samples.

Dr Darrin M Disley, Chief Executive Officer of Horizon Discovery Group plc, commented: “The ability to stratify populations that respond to drugs with the aid of blood-based biomarkers is becoming a critical part of developing better and more efficacious therapies. Horizon is committed to remaining at the forefront of high value technological advances that address our customers’ research needs. The addition of AIR technology to our offering supports our growth strategy and is highly complementary to our current portfolio.”

Dr Preston Keller, Vice President of Business Development at Adarza BioSystems, Inc., added: “We are delighted to be working with one of the world’s fastest-growing life science companies dedicated to driving forward the fields of gene editing and translational genomics. The agreement with Horizon validates Adarza’s disruptive technology platform and allows us to leverage Horizon’s world class sales and marketing network to bring the technology to market sooner and much more broadly than we could alone.”

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