BioServe touts the repository as the "the largest resource of high-quality biosamples for the life science industry" and claims that researchers can access it to garner biosamples from "most any major diseases."
As part of its request for dismissal, MIT admitted no wrongdoing, but agreed to be bound by any court ruling against the case's other defendants, the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
The matter is of particular importance since UMass is the only one of the four organizations to which the IP is assigned to have licensed it to companies other than Alnylam.
The suit, filed by Alnylam and Max Planck against the University of Massachusetts, MIT, and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, is set to go to trial Feb. 22.
"I've been absolutely blown away by the microRNA field and the way it's blossomed," University of Massachusetts Medical School researcher and Nobel laureate Craig Mello said. "There is just one story after another [showing that] microRNAs … are very critical to many aspects of either disease or development."
The RTI hopes to create synergies between investigators focused on basic science researchers and those oriented towards the clinic by putting them in the same space. At the same time, the institute aims to foster research that encompasses all RNA-related pathways, not just RNAi.
Russian and American researchers reported today that Alexei and Anastasia Romanov carried a mutation in the blood coagulation factor gene F9 that causes hemophilia B, or "Christmas disease."
