Marina Biotech said this week that it has regained the rights to the use of its transkingdom RNAi technology for agriculture and veterinary applications.
Those rights were previously held by Cambridge Biolabs, formerly ViThera, but the company recently shifted to a new business model, according to Marina. Cambridge Biolabs will retain the rights to the technology for limited veterinary uses, with Marina eligible to receive milestones and royalties.
Additional terms of the arrangement were not disclosed.
"With Cambridge Biolabs' success in transitioning to their new business model, it was an opportunity for Marina to capture the broader agriculture and veterinary uses for its strategic efforts,” Marina President and CEO Michael French said in a statement. “We continue to pursue business relationships that leverage our broad nucleic acid drug discovery platform in the agriculture and veterinary sectors to fund the advancement of nucleic acid-based human therapeutics."
The orally delivered tkRNAi technology involves using attenuated Escherichia coli to transcribe therapeutic shRNAs. Marina picked up the technology through its 2010 acquisition of Cequent Pharmaceuticals.