Horizon Discovery has announced a new collaboration and license agreement with Mammoth Biosciences, in order to access the company’s novel CRISPR platform and facilitate a new generation of genetically engineered CHO cells.

The collaboration means that the companies will put their heads together to optimise certain CRISPR tools to “rapidly develop proprietary CHO cell lines”, in which selected genes are ‘knocked out’ to improve performance parameters.

The San Fransisco-based biotech built the first CRISPR-based detection platform for diagnostics, which can be used and built on by partners across a variety of industries.

The DETECTR biosensing platform acts as a search engine for biology, capable of sensing any nucleic acid based biomarker, including markers for early detection of diseases ranging from infections to cancer.

Horizon’s chief executive officer commented that the company is “committed to leading the field in delivering the next generation of CHO cell lines to an industry where greater flexibility, increased speed to market and cost reduction are key drivers.”

He continued, “We believe that our expertise in cell line engineering can be leveraged to address many of these issues and with the addition of Mammoth’s technology, the opportunity now exists for Horizon to become a disruptive provider of best in class engineered CHO cells to enable the production of next-generation biotherapeutics.”