But these US patent applications have not yet transformed into granted patents, and there has been controversy as to whether other intellectual property - namely a European patent by Ribopharma founders Kreutzer and Stefan Limmer, which describes a method for inhibiting expression of a gene by insertion of double-stranded RNA of less than 25 nucleotides - constitutes prior art.
With the merger of Alnylam and Ribopharma, this sleeping beast of an IP controversy has been defanged.
"We thought that consolidation early on was the best strategy," said Peter Barrett, a board member of Alnylam and principal at Atlas Ventures, one of the Alnylam's major venture backers, "because then you can actually not [be] spending your time and money on fighting other potentially important IP; you are spending your time on developing the best combined intellectual property strategy - and more importantly, creating value from that."
This combined patent portfolio, the company's executives believe, will help it accomplish what is the next big goal: a major deal with a big pharma or big biotech company. "Due to the strength of the combined patent portfolio, we certainly will be the first address for any [company] in the biotech or pharma [sector] to deal with," said Limmer, who is the combined company's new chief technology officer.
Maraganore has a goal of landing the first major pharma or biotech partnership for Alnylam Holdings by the end of the third quarter - not an easy task. "You can look at the calendar as I do every day and realize that means that we have a goal of accomplishing this within the next three months," he said.
But luring pharma is not the only formidable challenge that Alnylam Holdings faces. Like other companies trying to turn siRNA into therapeutics, the company has to figure out how to deliver the molecules in a clinically effective and non-toxic manner. Delivery is "the number one technical hurdle that has to be addressed," Maraganore said. A "major goal of the combined company," he said, and one to which a major amount of the company's financing will be devoted, "is to identify the right strategies to ensure that delivery does not become a bottleneck for this new, important class of therapies."
In fact, breaking the delivery bottleneck will be key toward getting the pharma deals, for Alnylam Holdings or any other siRNA therapeutics company.
"I was recently talking to one of the heads of R&D for one of the major pharmas, and he said there was nothing that has impacted their process of target validation over the last ten years that has such a dramatic effect as siRNA," said Barrett. But the challenge "is 'how do we get those molecules that we can design to [target] the right cells?'"
