NEW YORK, July 29 - Alnylam Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Mass., has licensed two groups of patent applications related to RNA interference technology, the company said today.
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The first is an exclusive therapeutic license to US Patent Application No. 20030027783, "Inhibiting gene expression with dsRNA," which describes inventions by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and colleagues at University of Cambridge that concern "the specific inhibition of gene expression in mammals by bringing the target into contact with double stranded RNA (dsRNA)," according to the application. Alnylam licensed the application, which was published February 6, from Cancer Research Technology of the UK, a licensing arm of Cancer Research UK and other cancer research institutes.
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The company also obtained from MIT an exclusive therapeutic license for patent applications for drug-delivery inventions by MIT scientist Robert Langer that can be applied to RNAi therapeutics.
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The company did not disclose the financial terms of the licensing agreements.