Alnylam Pharmaceuticals said this week that it has received a milestone payment from Roche related to the initiation of pre-investigational new drug application studies for an RNAi therapeutic covered by a collaboration between the firms.
Financial details about the milestone were not disclosed.
The companies first began working together in 2007. Under that agreement, Roche acquired a non-exclusive license to use Alnylam's fundamental RNAi intellectual property to develop therapeutics in oncology, respiratory diseases, metabolic diseases, and certain liver diseases (see RNAi News, 7/12/2007).
In late 2009, Alnylam announced that the arrangement had advanced to the “RNAi therapeutic-collaboration phase,” under which the companies will jointly develop and commercialize specific, disease-target focused drug candidates based on the gene-silencing technology (see RNAi News, 11/5/2009).