Alnylam comments on Roche's corporate restructuring for RNAi therapeutics

Nov 18 2010

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, commented today on Roche's corporate restructuring and its implications on RNAi therapeutics. Specifically, Roche announced today their decision to effect a broad-based corporate restructuring that will result in discontinuation of certain activities in research and early development, including RNAi research conducted in Kulmbach, Germany and Madison, Wisconsin. This announcement was made by Roche as part of a broader range of portfolio decisions. This restructuring does not fundamentally impact Alnylam's financial position nor current or future plans in building its pipeline and advancing RNAi therapeutics as a whole new class of medicines.

“Roche has elected to make a number of broad-based portfolio decisions across their entire R&D organization that appear to affect their ability for continued and sustained resource commitment to RNAi therapeutics”

"Roche has elected to make a number of broad-based portfolio decisions across their entire R&D organization that appear to affect their ability for continued and sustained resource commitment to RNAi therapeutics," said John Maraganore, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Alnylam. "While we are disappointed and surprised to hear of their portfolio decision given the progress being made in the RNAi field, we remain more confident than ever in our efforts to advance RNAi therapeutics as a whole new class of innovative medicines to patients. In particular, we have achieved major breakthroughs in the safe and effective delivery of RNAi therapeutics and have also advanced our RNAi therapeutic efforts to patients in several clinical programs. We expect our delivery progress and clinical pipeline to continue to grow. Moreover, we believe we are on the frontier of demonstrating human proof-of-concept for these and other programs in the near term, and we are confident that these data will provide a strong foundation for continued execution on our business model and value creation strategy."

Source: Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.