Benitec Limited announced that a key patent focused on producing Double-Stranded Nucleic Acid constructs for therapeutic and related applications of RNA interference (RNAi) was granted in New Zealand.

"This is an excellent example of a patent that offers broad coverage and leverage in the field of RNAi therapeutics. We have already licensed this patent family for use in pre-clinical and clinical development of a hepatitis C therapeutic construct and will look to further licensing opportunities" said Sue MacLeman, chief executive officer, Benitec Ltd.

"We are delighted that this important Benitec patent has been granted. Through our own Benitec patent portfolio and also licensed technology from our partners, we have access to many pending and issued patent claims in the RNAi space. This technology's addition further broadens our RNAi intellectual property portfolio. This is a fully-owned Benitec patent that comes from work undertaken by the Benitec team," she added.

The granted claims of the patent include an invention directed towards producing constructs for RNAi techniques. The invention provides a ribonucleic acid (RNA) for use as interfering RNA in gene silencing techniques to silence a target gene.

The New Zealand patent number is 543815 with a WO publication number of W02004/106517. This patent was filed on 3 June 2004, a company release said.