Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, the developer of drugs using RNA interference technology, said today that Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company Novartis has chosen to extend their RNAi collaboration another year, through October 2009. The partnership, worth as much as $700 million to Alnylam if certain development milestones are met, was first struck in 2005. Under the deal, Novartis (NYSE: [[ticker:NVS]]) retains rights to buy as much as 19.9 percent of Alnylam’s stock (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ALNY]]) and it currently owns a 13.4 percent stake, Alnylam said.
Author: Luke Timmerman
Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.
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