Silence Therapeutics announced this week that it has signed a deal under which Miragen will evaluate its microRNA therapeutic candidates in combination with Silence's cationic lipid-based DBTC delivery technology.
Miragen will provide Silence with multiple specific miRNA sequences, which Silence will formulate with the DBTC technology. Miragen will then examine the compounds in vitro and in vivo, and have the option to select lead candidates for further development as therapeutics.
Additional terms of the arrangement were not disclosed.
“This is the third collaboration that we have recently signed to explore the use of Silence's delivery technologies for microRNAs,” Silence CEO Thomas Christely said in a statement. “Whilst we remain internally focused on the delivery of our siRNA therapies, we continue to broaden the potential value of our proprietary delivery systems by collaborating with partners.”
In October, Silence inked a DBTC-evaluation deal with Mirna Therapeutics (GSN 10/27/2011), although Mirna recently announced that it was going to use Marina Biotech's Smarticle lipids with numerous drug candidates (GSN 1/5/2012).
A month before that, Silence announced that InteRNA Technologies would examine Silence's core AtuPlex lipid delivery technology in combination with its own miRNA mimics (GSN 9/15/2011).