NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Having just secured its second small business grant from the National Institutes of Health, University at Albany spinout Hocus Locus is aiming to further develop a novel microRNA inhibition technology initially for research applications and, ultimately, as a therapeutic modality.

The approach is based on so-called structurally interacting RNAs, or sxRNAs, which the company believes are part of a post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism that controls RNA binding protein (RBP) interactions with messenger RNA.