Watertown, MA-based Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a developer of second-generation RNA-interference drugs, said today it is expanding its collaboration with the Japanese drug-maker Kyowa Hakko Kirin to include research of gene-silencing treatments for immunologic and inflammatory diseases. The firms announced their original collaboration, worth up to $1.4 billion, in January 2010 to focus on treatments for cancer. The expansion of this collaboration is a bit of good news for the RNAi therapeutics game, which took a big hit last month when the Swiss healthcare giant Roche announced its exit from research in the field.
Author: Ryan McBride
Ryan is an award-winning business journalist who contributes to our life sciences and technology coverage. He was previously a staff writer for Mass High Tech, a Boston business and technology newspaper, where he and his colleagues won a national business journalism award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2008. In recent years, he has made regular TV appearances on New England Cable News.
Prior to MHT, Ryan covered the life sciences, technology, and energy sectors for Providence Business News. He graduated with honors from the University of Rhode Island in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in communications. When he’s not chasing down news, Ryan enjoys mountain biking and skiing in his home state of Vermont.
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