• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Alnylam to Participate in Major Obesity Research Grant Awarded to Scientists at University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center

Posted on: Thursday, 6 September 2007, 12:07 CDT

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, today announced its participation in a $22 million "Roadmap Grant" from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded to leading scientists at UT Southwestern for research on obesity. In the funded research, Alnylam will design, synthesize, and optimize RNAi therapeutic compounds toward disease targets involved in the cause or pathway of obesity discovered by UT Southwestern scientists. Alnylam retains the rights to develop and commercialize RNAi therapeutics from the research effort.

"We are delighted to extend our research collaboration with UT Southwestern scientists in this new Roadmap Grant. The group at UT Southwestern has an outstanding track record for discovery of important biological pathways and specific pharmaceutical targets in major human diseases, and we believe that RNAi can be used as an enabling tool in their efforts," said Victor Kotelianski, M.D., Ph.D., Vice President for Research at Alnylam. "Moreover, our pre-clinical work on disease pathways with UT Southwestern scientists could also lead directly to the advancement of new RNAi therapeutic programs, since the same drugs used in model systems can be advanced to human testing."

Obesity afflicts nearly two-thirds of all Americans and is a major cause of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, fatty liver disease, and other disorders. The new grant, formally announced today, is one of only nine interdisciplinary research consortia sponsored by the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. The funding of $22 million will be provided over five years to UT Southwestern's Task Force for Obesity Research, comprised of a team of scientists and clinicians who are investigating the behavioral, molecular and metabolic mechanisms behind obesity and metabolic disorders. The grant's coordinating investigator is Dr. Jay Horton, and additional investigators include Drs. Jonathan Cohen, Helen Hobbs, Joseph Goldstein, and Michael Brown.

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 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. 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 influenza, hypercholesterolemia, and liver cancers, amongst other diseases. 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 Merck, Medtronic, Novartis, Biogen Idec, and Roche. The company, founded in 2002, maintains headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.alnylam.com.

Alnylam Forward-Looking Statements

Various statements in this release concerning Alnylam's future expectations, plans and prospects, including statements with respect to the discovery and development of RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of obesity, constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including risks related to: our approach to discover and develop novel drugs, which is unproven and may never lead to marketable products; our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; obtaining, maintaining and protecting intellectual property utilized by our products; our ability to enforce our patents against infringers and to defend our patent portfolio against challenges from third parties; our ability to obtain additional funding to support our business activities; our dependence on third parties for development, manufacture, marketing, sales and distribution of products; the successful development of Alnylam's product candidates, all of which are in early stages of development; obtaining regulatory approval for products; competition from others using technology similar to ours and others developing products for similar uses; our dependence on collaborators; and our short operating history; as well as those risks more fully discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Source: Business Wire

More News in this Category