Alnylam said that as part of the agreement, it would allow Merck, the parent company of one-time rival Sirna Therapeutics, to sub-license a portion of the disputed IP to which it previously did not have access.
The company said this week that it has begun manufacturing prototype disposable test cartridges for performing rapid, inexpensive PCR assays as part of a future portable HIV detection and monitoring system for use in developing countries.
While a handful of pricey deals have dominated the headlines, a handful of other companies over the past year have formed more modest collaborations to see whether they can take advantage of RNAi as a therapeutic modality.
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.
The SARS-CoV-2 variant uncovered in California may be more transmissible and partially evade vaccine-induced antibody response, the Los Angeles Times reports.
