Horizon Discovery, Zalicus deal
Horizon will acquire Zalicus' CombinatoRx combination high throughput screening (cHTS) business and related assets for $8 million. The business will become a subsidiary of Horizon and will be named Horizon CombinatoRx Inc. The assets include two integrated robotic screening platforms optimized for combination screening, the Chalice analytics software, a "highly characterized" library of about 800 cell lines and an "extensive" compound and chemical probe library. The deal is slated to close this month. Horizon will combine Zalicus' cHTS platform with Horizon's Genesis gene editing platform and X-Man isogenic cell line technology to offer services, including novel phenotypic cell-based screens with compound short interfering RNA, short hairpin RNA (shRNA) and single guide RNA (sgRNA) libraries. ...