Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi
therapeutics company, announced today that Novartis has elected to
extend the company’s RNAi therapeutics
collaboration for an additional year, through October 2009. The landmark
alliance was initiated in October 2005 and is focused on the discovery,
development, and commercialization of RNAi therapeutics toward a defined
number of Novartis-selected disease gene targets.
“Our efforts with Novartis have been very
productive over the past three years, and we are delighted that Novartis
has elected to extend our alliance for another year,”
said John Maraganore, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Alnylam. “Novartis
was a pioneer in recognizing the potential of RNAi therapeutics as a new
class of medicines, and we look forward to continuing our work with them
as we advance this innovation to patients.”
In the Novartis-Alnylam collaboration, both companies are jointly
responsible for RNAi discovery activities and Novartis is generally
responsible for development and commercialization of RNAi therapeutic
products. With the extension of the alliance term, Novartis will
continue to fund collaboration research and development efforts
conducted by Alnylam. Further, Novartis retains its right to exercise a
non-exclusive platform license from Alnylam in exchange for an
undisclosed payment and future milestones and royalties. In addition,
Novartis has the option to extend the collaboration for one additional
one-year term through 2010. Finally, Novartis retains certain rights to
purchase Alnylam equity up to 19.9%; current Novartis ownership is
approximately 13.4%.
About RNA Interference (RNAi)
RNAi (RNA interference) 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 which 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.
