Oct. 27, 2009 (Business Wire) -- Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, and KOKEN Co., Ltd., a leading atelocollagen company, announced today that Alnylam has granted KOKEN a non-exclusive worldwide 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 small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and their use to mediate RNAi in mammalian cells, and of RNAi-related mechanisms.
“We are pleased to grant KOKEN 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. “This new agreement continues to underscore the value of the Kreutzer-Limmer patent family as a critical component of fundamental intellectual property in the field of RNAi. With more than 15 license agreements with global research product suppliers, including five in the Asian markets alone, we believe the vast majority of industrial sales of RNAi products for research purposes are currently being made under a license from Alnylam."
“This new agreement with Alnylam enhances our ability to become a leading global supplier of innovative RNAi reagent products in Japan and worldwide,” said Yuzo Tarumi, Ph.D., President of KOKEN. “Access to the Kreutzer-Limmer patent estate enables us to augment our current 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)
1BRNAi (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. Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), the molecules that mediate RNAi and comprise Alnylam’s RNAi therapeutic platform, target the cause of diseases by potently silencing specific mRNAs, thereby preventing disease-causing proteins from being made.
