Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Roche team up to develop specific RNAi therapeutic products

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today that it has advanced to the RNAi therapeutic collaboration stage of its landmark alliance with Roche formed in 2007.

In this phase of the collaboration, the partners will jointly collaborate on the discovery and development of specific RNAi therapeutic products and each will contribute key delivery technologies in the new disease target-focused effort. New delivery technologies include Alnylam lipid nanoparticles and Roche Madison dynamic polyconjugate delivery technologies. Alnylam and Roche will co-develop and co-commercialize RNAi therapeutic products in the U.S. market and Alnylam is eligible to receive additional milestone and royalty payments for products developed in the rest of world.

“We are excited to advance to this phase of our 2007 agreement, as our joint efforts combine many strengths of the Alnylam and Roche platforms on specific disease target programs,” said Barry Greene, President and Chief Operating Officer of Alnylam. “Our partnership with Roche remains very strong and we look forward to working together to bring our innovation to patients.”

“Since the formation of our alliance with Alnylam and the establishment of Roche Kulmbach and Roche Madison as Centers of Excellence for RNA therapeutic research, we have made significant progress in advancing this technology as a potential new class of innovative medicines,” said Louis Renzetti, Ph.D., Vice President of RNA Therapeutics Research of Roche. “We continue to view RNAi as having true potential as a whole new class of differentiated drugs to benefit patients.”

In July 2007, Alnylam granted to Roche a non-exclusive license providing access to broad Alnylam intellectual property (IP) and know-how, including fundamental, chemistry and delivery IP, in the fields of oncology, respiratory disease, metabolic disease, and certain liver diseases. In addition, Alnylam and Roche agreed to collaborate on RNAi therapeutics drug discovery for a defined number of disease targets, subject to certain Alnylam third party obligations. As part of the agreement, Roche also acquired Alnylam’s Kulmbach-based research & development (R&D) organization which has now become Roche Kulmbach, a Roche Centre of Excellence for RNA therapeutics. In July 2008, Roche acquired Madison, WI-based Mirus Technologies, Inc., a pioneer in the discovery of a novel RNAi delivery technology known as dynamic polyconjugates. Mirus has become Roche Madison, an additional Roche Centre of Excellence for RNA therapeutics.