Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.\u00a0(NASDAQ: ALNY) and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: REGN), have announced a collaboration to \u201cdiscover, develop and commercialize new RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutics for a broad range of diseases\u201d focused on ocular and central nervous system (CNS) indications. It is understood that Regeneron will pay a $400 million upfront payment to Alnylam and will also purchase up to $400 million of Alnylam equity at $90 per share. \u00a0The companies will select an as yet undisclosed number of preclinical disease programs.<\/p>\n
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\u201cRibonucleic acid interference\u201d (or \u201cRNAi\u201d), a biological process originally thought to have evolved to counter viral infections, is continually finding innovative applications for the treatment of a variety of human diseases.\u00a0 There is a rather ironic connection between RNAi and the human eye in the story of how this phenomenon was first identified.\u00a0 In an effort to make flowers more aesthetically pleasing to the eye with deeper petal colours, plant genetic researchers back in the 1990s were experimenting with genes known to be responsible for flower pigmentation.\u00a0 By introducing such genes into plants, researchers expected to breed varieties with more vivid colours but instead got the opposite result, i.e.<\/em>, flowers with either variegated pigmentation or flowers lacking pigmentation altogether!\u00a0 Introducing such genes, it appeared, somehow effected the normal expression of flowers\u2019 endogenous pigment genes. Curiosity as to how such an effect was occurring led a number of researchers by the mid-1990s to discover that when plants were attacked by certain viruses one of the defence mechanisms used by the plant to rid itself of the pathogen involved a targeted destruction of viral RNA.\u00a0 The rationale here was that by destroying the virus\u2019 ability to translate viral RNA into viral protein, the plant could halt the infection in its tracks.\u00a0 The phenomenon was termed \u201cPTGS\u201d or \u201cpost transcriptional gene silencing\u201d but is today commonly referred to as RNA interference (RNAi).\u00a0 RNAi is essentially a biological mechanism that interferes with the information flow between RNA and protein and this has built up to a 2-decade biotechnology industry which followed up to the recent commercial agreement between Alnylam and Regeneron.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to the announcement, Alnylam stated that, \u201c[u]nder the terms of the alliance, Alnylam will work exclusively with Regeneron to discover RNAi therapeutics for eye and CNS diseases. Regeneron will lead development and commercialization for all programs targeting eye diseases, with Alnylam entitled to potential milestone and royalty payments. The companies will jointly advance and alternate leadership on CNS programs, with the lead party retaining global development and commercial responsibility. For CNS programs, both companies will have the option at candidate selection to participate equally in potential future profits of programs led by the other party\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.\u00a0(NASDAQ: ALNY) and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: REGN), have announced a collaboration to \u201cdiscover, develop and commercialize new RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutics for a broad range of diseases\u201d focused on ocular and central nervous system (CNS) indications. It is understood that Regeneron will pay a $400 million upfront payment to Alnylam and will […]\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75643,"template":"","categories":[86,74],"tags":[179],"session_type":[],"event":[],"subject_disease":[],"section":[],"speaker":[],"resource_type":[199],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource\/1515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/resource"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource\/1515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2429,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource\/1515\/revisions\/2429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"session_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/session_type?post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"event","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event?post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"subject_disease","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subject_disease?post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"speaker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speaker?post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"resource_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euretina.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_type?post=1515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}