Marina Biotech Inc., a leading nucleic acid-based drug discovery and development company, has regained intellectual property rights to its transkingdom RNAi (tkRNAi) drug discovery platform for both agriculture and veterinary uses.

The company is currently developing a human therapeutic based on the tkRNAi technology and recently announced the completion of dosing for Cohort 2 in the dose escalation phase of its START-FAP (Safety and Tolerability of An RNAi Therapeutic in Familial Adenomatous Polyposis) clinical trial. Cambridge Biolabs, formerly ViThera LLC, will maintain a license to tkRNAi for certain veterinary applications and, in turn, Marina Biotech continues to be eligible for milestone and royalty payments arising from those programmes.

“We are pleased to see the progress Cambridge Biolabs has made with the application of our tkRNAi technology to the development of certain veterinary-based programmes,” stated J Michael French, president and CEO at Marina Biotech. “With Cambridge Biolabs' success in transitioning to their new business model, it was an opportunity for Marina to capture the broader agriculture and veterinary uses for its strategic efforts. We continue to pursue business relationships that leverage our broad nucleic acid drug discovery platform in the agriculture and veterinary sectors to fund the advancement of nucleic acid-based human therapeutics.”

The transkingdom RNA interference (tkRNAi) technology is a broad-reaching platform that can be used to develop highly specific drug products for a diverse set of diseases. The tkRNAi platform involves the modification of bacteria to deliver short-hairpin RNA (shRNA) to cells of the intestinal tract. A significant advantage of the tkRNAi platform is oral (by mouth) delivery making this platform extremely patient friendly while harnessing the full potential of the RNAi process.

Marina Biotech is a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of oligonucleotide-based therapeutics utilizing multiple mechanisms of action including RNA interference (RNAi) and messenger RNA translational blocking.

Cambridge Biolabs, LLC (CBL) is a biotechnology company offering assay development and custom contract research services, mainly for startup companies in the biotechnology industry.