How gene editing is revolutionising the pharmaceuticals industry – Telegraph.co.uk

But the 49-year-old, who had pursued a career in football before joining the world of science, was not one to be deterred. Born in Londons East End into a single-parent, working-class family, his journey into the fields of science, academia and business has been anything but conventional. When my mother fell pregnant with me my father was on the run from prison, he says.

There had been 10 years of investment in this editing tool we bought and when we got the IP we went around to all the universities who had used it over the past decade and made models and offered them a route to selling those models, in return for a nice royalty payment, he says.

Within weeks, Horizon started selling these genetically engineered cell lines and in the first year made $500,000 in revenue and turned a profit. In 2009, sales rose to $1.2m.

At that point we started getting real interest because sequencing costs had come down even more and we were doing well in a recession, Disley recalls. That led to further investment. Companies such as Genentech, later acquired by Roche, put in 1m, existing investors stumped up more cash, and venture capital flowed in.

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How gene editing is revolutionising the pharmaceuticals industry - Telegraph.co.uk