Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced that Novartis has elected to extend the company's RNAi therapeutics collaboration for an additional year, through October 2009. The landmark alliance was initiated in October 2005 and is focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of RNAi therapeutics toward a defined number of Novartis-selected disease gene targets.

"Our efforts with Novartis have been very productive over the past three years, and we are delighted that Novartis has elected to extend our alliance for another year," said John Maraganore, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Alnylam. "Novartis was a pioneer in recognizing the potential of RNAi therapeutics as a new class of medicines, and we look forward to continuing our work with them as we advance this innovation to patients."

In the Novartis-Alnylam collaboration, both companies are jointly responsible for RNAi discovery activities and Novartis is generally responsible for development and commercialization of RNAi therapeutic products. With the extension of the alliance term, Novartis will continue to fund collaboration research and development efforts conducted by Alnylam.

Further, Novartis retains its right to exercise a non-exclusive platform license from Alnylam in exchange for an undisclosed payment and future milestones and royalties. In addition, Novartis has the option to extend the collaboration for one additional one-year term through 2010. Finally, Novartis retains certain rights to purchase Alnylam equity up to 19.9%; current Novartis ownership is approximately 13.4%.

RNAi (RNA interference) is a revolution in biology, representing a breakthrough in understanding how genes are turned on and off in cells, and a completely new approach to drug discovery and development. Its discovery has been heralded as "a major scientific breakthrough that happens once every decade or so," and represents one of the most promising and rapidly advancing frontiers in biology and drug discovery today which was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. RNAi is a natural process of gene silencing that occurs in organisms ranging from plants to mammals. By harnessing the natural biological process of RNAi occurring in our cells, the creation of a major new class of medicines, known as RNAi therapeutics, is on the horizon. RNAi therapeutics target the cause of diseases by potently silencing specific messenger RNAs (mRNAs), thereby preventing disease-causing proteins from being made. RNAi therapeutics have the potential to treat disease and help patients in a fundamentally new way.