Dharmacon, Akceli Sign Research Agreement to Combine Technologies

NEW YORK, Nov. 3 (GenomeWeb News) - Dharmacon has signed on to a research collaboration with Akceli, of Cambridge, Mass. to study ways to combine Dharmacon's short interfering RNA with Akceli's reverse-transfection technology, the companies said today.

Under the agreement, Dharmacon, of Lafayette, Colo., will supply Akceli with siRNA reagents and Akceli will conduct experiments using the siRNA and its reverse transfection materials, which involve growing a lawn of cells onto a surface onto which cDNA has already been printed, rather than adding cDNA to a microwell or petri dish full of cells. The companies hope to validate the efficacy of reverse transfection of siRNA, as well as Akceli's siRNAs and assays in the cancer area.

"Combining Dharmacon's siRNA reagents with Akceli's reverse transfection technology should enable us to provide a high throughput format for the analysis of siRNA-mediated gene silencing," David Chao, president and co-founder of Akceli, said in a statement

Chao co-founded Akceli with Whitehead fellow David Sabatini in 2002.

Dharmacon has signed several technology research collaborations in different areas this year: with Agilent, for microarrays and siRNA; with Odyssey Thera for cell-based assays ; with Abbott and with Exelixis for siRNA libraries.

The parties did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement.