Product News: Caliper Life Sciences Forms Alliance with Horizon Discovery to Provide Enhanced Solutions for Cancer Research Based on Isogenic Cell Lines

Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. today announced a partnership with Horizon Discovery Ltd. (Cambridge, UK) that expands Caliper Discovery Alliances and Services’ (CDAS) oncology cell line and screening capabilities for testing single drugs and combination therapies. Through this alliance, CDAS now offers unique, genetically-defined, and isogenic human cancer cell lines that allow researchers to better identify and characterize personalized drugs targeted at a specific subset of patients.

Isogenic cell-line pairs, where one cell line contains a genetic alteration or mutation of interest and the other contains the normal gene, represent cell-based models that accurately portray specific human diseases in the context of their matched normal genetic backgrounds. The inclusion of isogenic cell-line pairs in the discovery process enables scientists to better understand the mechanism of action of lead compounds, directly identify patient-relevant compounds from large compound libraries, re-profile existing drugs for new therapeutic indications, assess the efficacy of drug combinations, and identify potential side effects earlier in the discovery process.

“The alliance with Horizon Discovery adds significant value to existing CDAS offerings and illustrates Caliper’s commitment to providing accurate in vitro and in vivo models for oncology research,” said David Manyak, Executive Vice President of Drug Discovery Services, Caliper Life Sciences. “The addition of Horizon’s isogenic cell lines to our existing oncology cell proliferation panel, and the ability to correlate results from these isogenic cell lines to efficacy in specific patient populations, further solidifies Caliper’s in vitro-in vivo-human (IIH) bridge. Access to these tools will enable researchers to enhance the success rate and reduce the cost of discovering targeted monotherapy or combination therapies that better treat disease with fewer adverse events.”

Rather than being a single disease, researchers now understand that there are numerous forms of cancer, many of which are associated with specific genetic alterations among cancer patient subpopulations. The discovery of targeted or personalized medicines that treat patients with a specific genetic makeup is a long and difficult process. Using more predictive cellular models that better reflect the complexity of biological systems will accelerate and rationalize many aspects of the discovery process – including target selection, lead-compound generation and identification of the most responsive patients for clinical studies. The availability of such models also enables molecular diagnostic findings to be incorporated into existing drug discovery processes.

“Our extensive panel of isogenic human cancer cell-lines is a key, previously missing, tool in understanding the link between drug behavior and patients’ genetic mutations. Our partnership with Caliper allows us to greatly expand the reach of our cell lines to assist researchers that are focused on uncovering cancer therapies,” said Chris Torrance, CEO, Horizon Discovery. “Together we aim to significantly accelerate the search for new and more effective targeted or personalized drugs.”