Mirna Therapeutics said this week that the US Patent and Trademark Office has issued a notice of allowance for claims in a company-controlled patent application related to the therapeutic use of the let-7 microRNA.
Mirna said that, along with collaborators at Yale University, it has shown that let-7 regulates "multiple cancer-related genes and pathways, influences the sensitivity of cancer cells to radiation and chemotherapy, and affects tumor development."
Additional work has demonstrated that altered expression of let-7 is important in cancer stem cell development and that the miRNA can inhibit metastasis.