Cambridge personalised medicine company Horizon Discovery, which on Monday night scooped both the top UK company and best tech start up prizes in the Government’s new iawards, has followed up in spectacular fashion by announcing a further deal with pharma giant, Novartis.

Horizon has entered into a four-year strategic collaboration with Novartis – the second deal between the companies.

Through its agreements, Novartis pays Horizon undisclosed up-front, milestone and renewal fees.

The new deal sees the use of Horizon’s proprietary GENESIS gene-engineering platform to develop a broad panel of custom generated genetically-defined human ‘X-MAN’ cancer models for deployment in Novartis’s drug discovery research programs.

X-MAN ‘Mutant And Normal’ cell-lines may represent a missing link in the rational discovery of modern cancer therapies that aim to better target the root causes of cancer.

Dr Chris Torrance, CEO of Horizon says: “The comprehensive nature of this collaboration with Novartis, which is at the forefront of research into new and improved targeted and personalised cancer therapeutics, is a significant breakthrough for our company.

“Horizon’s proprietary GENESIS platform enables the routine generation of a wide-range of human disease models that were difficult or impossible to generate using historical gene-engineering techniques.”

The Novartis deal represented a breathtaking follow-up to Horizon's – and two other Cambridge companies’ – success in the inaugural iawards.