Courtesy of Benzinga.
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY) announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a Notice of Allowance for patent application number 12/813,448, covering the company’s proprietary second generation lipid nanoparticle (LNP) platform, including the “MC3” lipid. This second generation LNP delivery platform is being utilized in development programs as part of the company’s “Alnylam 5×15™” product strategy including: ALN-TTR02, an RNAi therapeutic targeting transthyretin for the treatment of transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis; ALN-PCS, an RNAi therapeutic targeting PCSK9 for the treatment of severe hypercholesterolemia; and potentially other programs.
“We are very pleased with the USPTO’s allowance of claims for this important patent related to our second generation LNPs, thus acknowledging the novelty of the MC3 lipid for systemic delivery of RNAi therapeutics,” said Laurence Reid, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer of Alnylam. “Importantly, these novel LNPs exhibit significant improvements in potency and therapeutic index for RNAi therapeutics, as evidenced by our recent human data with ALN-PCS, and also define Alnylam’s LNP platform for advancement of ALN-TTR02 and potentially other ‘Alnylam 5×15′ programs.”
The newly allowed patent application includes 30 claims covering composition of matter and formulations of MC3, as well as methods of using these compositions and formulations. The patent application lists as inventors Jianxin Chen and Steven Ansell of AlCana Technologies, Inc., and Akin Akinc, Joseph Robert Dorkin, Xiaojun Qin, William Cantley, Muthiah Manoharan, Kallanthottathil G. Rajeev, Jayaprakash K. Narayannair and Muthusamy Jayaraman of Alnylam.
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