Business
Alnylam and PeptiDream Enter into Collaboration Agreement to Discover and Develop Peptide-siRNA Conjugates for Targeted Delivery of RNAi Therapeutics to a Broader Range of Extrahepatic Tissues
− Agreement Combines PeptiDream’s Peptide Discovery Platform to Identify High Affinity Peptide Ligands with Alnylam’s Expertise in siRNA-Conjugate-Based
About this update from Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"\n− Agreement Combines PeptiDream’s Peptide Discovery Platform to Identify High Affinity Peptide Ligands with Alnylam’s Expertise in siRNA-Conjugate-Based Delivery and in Developing and Commercializing RNAi Therapeutics −\n\n CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & KAWASAKI CITY, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nAlnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), the leading RNAi therapeutics company, and PeptiDream, Inc. (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 4587), the leading peptide-based drug discovery company with its proprietary Peptide Discovery Platform System (PDPS), announced today a license and collaboration agreement to discover and develop peptide-siRNA conjugates to create multiple opportunities to deliver RNAi therapeutics to tissues outside the liver. Through this collaboration, the companies will collaborate to select and optimize peptides for targeted delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules to a wide range of cell types and tissues via specific interactions with receptors expressed on the target cells.\n\nUnder the terms of the alliance, Alnylam will select a set of receptors for PeptiDream’s peptide discovery platform. PeptiDream will select, optimize, and synthesize peptides for each receptor. Alnylam will then generate peptide-siRNA conjugates and perform in vitro and in vivo studies to support final peptide selection. The collaboration has the potential to yield multiple treatment opportunities by targeting disease causing mRNA transcripts in a wide variety of tissue types.\n\n“Having solved delivery of RNAi therapeutics to the liver and made substantial preclinical progress on in vivo delivery to the CNS, eye, and lung, we are now adding to our suite of delivery technologies that have the potential to enable efficient delivery of siRNA to even broader tissue types throughout the human body,” said Kevin Fitzgerald, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Alnylam. “We are excited to enter into this collaborative research agreement with PeptiDream, an industry leader in the discovery and optimization of peptide ligands against a wide variety of receptors. Through this collaboration, we hope to identify robust ligand-receptor pairs for extrahepatic tissue delivery, similar to the GalNAc-ASGPR pair that we have pioneered for effective liver delivery.”\n\n“We look forward to partnering with Alnylam to leverage our PDPS technology an...