OREANDA-NEWS. Horizon Discovery Group plc (LSE: HZD) ("Horizon" or "the Company"), the leading international gene editing company, is today hosting an event for media and analysts covering Horizon on gene editing and its impact on translational research and personalised and genomic medicine development. 

Ground-breaking gene editing technologies now allow an unprecedented ability to design, engineer and apply edited cells in genomics research, personalised medicine development and, increasingly, cell and gene therapy. Host Dr. Darrin M. Disley, Chief Executive Officer and President, Research Biotech of Horizon, alongside some if the industry's foremost innovators, will discuss how these gene editing techniques (including CRISPR, rAAV and ZFN) are radically changing the landscape for human healthcare. 

Horizon has invited a team of world leading specialists in the field of gene editing to share their insights, to answer questions and to look at real world applications of this new technology. Presenters will include:

 ·      Dr. Feng Zhang, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, MIT, Core Member of the Broad Institute and co-inventor of CRISPR gene editing;

·      Dr. Eric Hendrickson, Professor, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, University of Minnesota and expert in gene manipulation using  CRISPR  rAAV, ZFN and TALEN;

·      Dr. Sebastian Nijman, Associate Member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Oxford, Director of Functional Genomics at the Target Discovery Institute and adjunct Principal Investigator at the Research Center for Molecular Medicine (CeMM);

·      Dr. Darrin M. Disley, Chief Executive Officer and President, Research Biotech, Horizon Discovery Group plc;

·      Dr. Jon Moore, Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President, Research Biotech, Horizon Discovery Group plc

About Horizon Discovery Group plc

Horizon is a leading international gene-editing company that supplies products, services and research programmes that enable genomics research and the development of personalised and genomic medicines. Horizon has a diverse and global customer base of over 1,400 unique organisations across more than 50 countries, including major pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostic companies as well as leading academic research centres. The Group supplies its products and services into multiple markets, estimated to total in excess of £29 billion in 2015. 

Horizon's core capabilities are built around its proprietary translational genomics platform, a highly precise and flexible suite of gene editing tools (rAAV, ZFN and CRISPR) able to alter almost any gene sequence in human or mammalian cell-lines. 

Horizon offers over 23,000 catalogue products, almost all of which are based on the application of gene editing to generate in vitro and in-vivo models that accurately model the disease-causing genetic anomalies found in diseases like cancer. These 'patients-in-a-test-tube' are being used by customers to: understand the genetic drivers of disease; identify targets of therapeutic intervention that can moderate or correct these genetic drivers; develop novel medicines and companion diagnostic tests that result in the right patient getting the right medicine. 

Horizon also provides custom in vitro and in vivo disease model generation services, biopharmaceutical manufacturing cell lines and generation services, quantitative molecular reference standards and contract research and custom screening services. 

In addition, Horizon through its Research Biotech business deploys the Company's intellectual property, gene-editing platform, products, services and know-how in cancer research, drug discovery and immunology to develop its immuno-oncology, synthetic lethality and cell therapy platforms which aim to deliver novel drug treatments into the pharmaceutical pipeline.