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Alnylam Grants Shanghai GenePharma License to Kreutzer-Limmer Patents for the RNA Interference Research Products Market
Business Wire, March 20, 2008
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & SHANGHAI, China -- Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, and Shanghai GenePharma Co., Ltd, a leading siRNA supplier in China, announced today that Alnylam has granted Shanghai GenePharma a non-exclusive world-wide license to manufacture and provide RNAi research products and services under the Kreutzer-Limmer patent family. This patent family, owned exclusively by Alnylam, covers fundamental aspects of the structure and uses of RNAi products including their use to mediate RNAi in mammalian cells and of RNAi-related mechanisms.
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"The Kreutzer-Limmer patent family is one of the critical components of fundamental intellectual property in the field of RNAi, and we are pleased to grant Shanghai GenePharma a license to manufacture and provide siRNA reagents to its industry and academic customers around the world for research purposes," said Jason Rhodes, Vice President of Business Development at Alnylam. "Providing this license to Shanghai GenePharma represents our first business transaction in China, which is regarded as having one of the fastest growing life science markets in the world. With more than 16 license agreements with global research product suppliers, we believe the vast majority of industrial sales of RNAi products for research purposes are currently being made under a license from Alnylam."
"This agreement with Alnylam, a leader in the field of RNAi, reinforces our ability to become a leading global supplier of RNAi reagent products to the pharmaceutical and research community in China and worldwide," said Peter Zhang, Ph.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Shanghai GenePharma. "Access to the Kreutzer-Limmer patent estate allows us to augment our RNAi products, thereby strengthening our position in the life sciences marketplace."
Alnylam's intellectual property estate includes certain fundamental patents and patent applications, including the Kreutzer-Limmer I and II patents, which claim the broad structural and functional properties of synthetic RNAi products.
About RNA Interference (RNAi)
RNAi is a revolution in biology, representing a breakthrough in understanding how genes are turned on and off in cells, and a completely new approach to drug discovery and development. Its discovery has been heralded as "a major scientific breakthrough that happens once every decade or so," and represents one of the most promising and rapidly advancing frontiers in biology and drug discovery today, and was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. RNAi is a natural process of gene silencing that occurs in organisms ranging from plants to mammals. By harnessing the natural biological process of RNAi occurring in our cells, the creation of a major new class of medicines, known as RNAi therapeutics, is on the horizon. RNAi therapeutics target the cause of diseases by potently silencing specific messenger RNAs (mRNAs), thereby preventing disease-causing proteins from being made. RNAi therapeutics have the potential to treat disease and help patients in a fundamentally new way.
About Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
Alnylam is a biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics based on RNA interference, or RNAi. The company is applying its therapeutic expertise in RNAi to address significant medical needs, many of which cannot effectively be addressed with small molecules or antibodies, the current major classes of drugs. Alnylam is leading the translation of RNAi as a new class of innovative medicines with peer-reviewed research efforts published in the world's top scientific journals including Nature, Nature Medicine, and Cell. The company is leveraging these capabilities to build a broad pipeline of RNAi therapeutics; its most advanced program is in Phase II human clinical trials for the treatment of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. In addition, the company is developing RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of a wide range of disease areas, including hypercholesterolemia, liver cancers, and Huntington's disease. The company's leadership position in fundamental patents, technology, and know-how relating to RNAi has enabled it to form major alliances with leading companies including Medtronic, Novartis, Biogen Idec, and Roche. To reflect its outlook for key scientific, clinical, and business initiatives, Alnylam has established "RNAi 2010" which includes the company's plan to significantly expand the scope of delivery solutions for RNAi therapeutics, have four or more programs in clinical development, and to form four or more new major business collaborations, all by the end of 2010. Alnylam is a joint owner of Regulus Therapeutics LLC, a joint venture focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of microRNA therapeutics. Founded in 2002, Alnylam maintains headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.alnylam.com.
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