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Alnylam Grants Dharmacon License to Kreutzer-Limmer Patents for the RNA Interference Research Products Market

09 Jan 2006 - Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Dharmacon, Inc., a business unit of the Fisher Biosciences group, announced that Alnylam has granted Dharmacon a non-exclusive license to provide RNAi research products and services under the Kreutzer-Limmer patent family. This patent family, owned solely by Alnylam, covers small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and their use to mediate RNAi in mammalian cells.
 
Alnylam's intellectual property estate includes certain "fundamental" patents and patent applications that claim broad structural and functional properties of synthetic RNAi products. This fundamental intellectual property includes the Kreutzer-Limmer patent family that was obtained through the July 2003 acquisition of Ribopharma AG, now Alnylam Europe AG. The Kreutzer-Limmer family includes: EP Patent No. 1144623, covering siRNAs up to 25 nucleotides in length having a sequence complementary to a target gene; and EP Patent No. 1214945, covering compositions, methods, and uses of siRNAs with a length between 15 and 49 nucleotides. Patents corresponding to these European patents have been issued or are pending in many other countries.