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Alnylam Awarded Federal Grant to Develop RNAi Therapeutics for Pandemic Flu

11 Sep 2006 - Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded the company a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to advance the development of RNAi therapeutics for pandemic influenza. The SBIR grant will provide Alnylam with approximately $590,000 in funding over a one-year period to support the company's research efforts on small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), the molecules that mediate RNAi, as anti-viral drugs with broad spectrum activity toward multiple influenza strains including the H5N1 virus.
 
Alnylam's flu program, partnered with Novartis, is focused on the development of RNAi therapeutics targeting sequences that are common to all flu genomes, including those of avian origin such as the H5N1 strain. Earlier this year, Alnylam scientists and academic collaborators demonstrated in vitro anti-viral activity toward a human clinical isolate of the H5N1 virus. These potent effects toward H5N1 were achieved with multiple siRNAs that also showed anti-viral activity toward other flu strains. The alliance's lead RNAi therapeutic candidate, ALN-FLU01, is comprised of two siRNAs that target distinct, highly conserved gene sequences of the flu genome.