Horizon Discovery Group plc, Centre for Process Innovation and University of Manchester Awarded £1.67M
Consortium to receive funding to develop enhanced biomanufacturing platforms based on the Company’s CHO cell line and gene editing platform
Horizon Discovery Group plc announced that together with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and Prof. Alan Dickson, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, they have been selected to receive a funding award of £1.67M (approximately $2.56M USD). The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) will provide £422K in funding, and the remainder will be from the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK. Horizon will receive up to £747,000 (approximately $1,146,000 USD) which will be deployed within research performed in its Bioproduction business. The funding is awarded under Innovate UK’s new ‘Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst’ scheme.
This funding will support the development of a commercially valuable enhancement to Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell lines, critical tools for biomanufacturing of high value biopharmaceuticals.
The project aims to develop a suite of engineered CHO cell lines containing a range of modifications designed to control and improve metabolic performance of these cells for the production of biological medicines. By focusing on combinatorial gene editing, the consortium aims to generate robust phenotypes, which will not only enhance understanding of the CHO expression platform, but will ultimately lead to successful industrial translation. The project is designed to decrease the risk associated with the introduction of high levels of innovation in cell line engineering, while establishing a platform that can be made broadly accessible across the biopharmaceutical industry, in the UK and beyond.
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