Tuesday, October 14, 2008

RXi lands RNAi delivery tech license from UMass Medical

By Mass High Tech Staff

RNA-interference (RNAi) focused biotech RXi Pharmaceuticals Corp. has acquired a technology license for an RNAi oral delivery platform, called Oral rxRNA, from the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

The Worcester-based biotech will initially use the delivery technology together with RNAi therapies to treat inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, Crohn’s disease, atherosclerosis and psoriasis.

RXi  (Nasdaq: RXII) retained the exclusive worldwide rights to the technology, which was developed by Michael Czech and Gary Ostroff, both professors in molecular medicine at UMMS. Czech was one of the co-founders of RXi.

The majority of anti-inflammatory treatments on the market are administered by injection and an oral delivery RNAi compound “could have significant competitive advantages,” said RXi CEO Tod Woolf.

In late 2007, RXi licensed (RNAi) sequences from research products giant Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., RXi officials reported. Worcester-based RXi said its exclusive license from Waltham-based Thermo covers the therapeutic uses of RNAi sequences for an undisclosed number of target genes. The deal comes after RXi in November 2007 said it had been granted an exclusive license to RNAi technology from California’s Invitrogen Inc., another provider of research products.

RXi is a developer of RNA interference drugs designed to block genes linked to disease from producing proteins. The company was launched in January 2007 with a scientific advisory board chaired by Craig Mello, winner of a 2006 Nobel prize for his research of RNAi.