Horizon Acquires CombinatoRx From Zalicus
International life science company Horizon Discovery Group announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the CombinatoRx service business and related assets from biopharmaceutical company Zalicus. Under the terms of the agreement, Horizon will pay $8 million for CombinatoRx, which will be renamed Horizon CombinatoRx Inc.
The new wholly-owned subsidiary will offer access to the unique combination high thoroughput screening business and Chalice analytics software for evaluation of complementary drug combinations. Horizon CombinatoRx’s platform will be combined with Horizon’s GENESIS gene editing platform and X-MAN isogenic cell line technology to offer new services. These will include novel phenotypic cell-based screens with compound siRNA, shRNA, and sgRNA (for CRISPR based screening) libraries intended to investigate efficacy and mechanistic synergies of thousands of potential drug combinations intended towards personalized medicine therapies for the treatment of serious diseases.
With combination therapies rising as the standard of care in various indications such as cancer, diabetes, inflammatory and infectious diseases, the new company will leverage its combination screening platform and gene editing capabilities to identify new multi-target mechanisms in diseases.
The acquisition agreement will include two fully integrated robotic screening platforms designed for combination screening, customer contracts, the Chalice informatics platform, a library of around 800 cell lines, and a broad compound and chemical probe library. The new company will be located in 23,000 square feet of laboratory and office space in Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Darrin Disley, CEO of Horizon Discovery Group, said the company puts a high premium on the CombinatoRx business based on its excellent performance in the past. “The scalable and proven cHTS and Chalice platform combined with our world-leading translational genomics technologies significantly broadens the portfolio of discovery research services we can offer to our global customer base. We look forward working with the CombinatoRx team to provide science-driven solutions that will add real value to our customers’ research.”