Alnylam Grants Shanghai GenePharma License to Kreutzer-Limmer Patents for the RNA Interference (RNAi) Research Products Market

Thursday March 20 11:00 PM

"The Kreutzer-Limmer patent family is one of the critical components of fundamental intellectual property in the field of RNAi, and we are pleased to grant Shanghai GenePharma a license to manufacture and provide siRNA reagents to its industry and academic customers around the world for research purposes," said Jason Rhodes, Vice President of Business Development at Alnylam. "Providing this license to Shanghai GenePharma represents our first business transaction in China, which is regarded as having one of the fastest growing life science markets in the world. With more than 16 license agreements with global research product suppliers, we believe the vast majority of industrial sales of RNAi products for research purposes are currently being made under a license from Alnylam."

"This agreement with Alnylam, a leader in the field of RNAi, reinforces our ability to become a leading global supplier of RNAi reagent products to the pharmaceutical and research community in China and worldwide," said Peter Zhang, Ph.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Shanghai GenePharma. "Access to the Kreutzer-Limmer patent estate allows us to augment our RNAi products, thereby strengthening our position in the life sciences marketplace."

Alnylam's intellectual property estate includes certain fundamental patents and patent applications, including the Kreutzer-Limmer I and II patents, which claim the broad structural and functional properties of synthetic RNAi products.

About RNA Interference (RNAi)

RNAi is a revolution in biology, representing a breakthrough in understanding how genes are turned on and off in cells, and a completely new approach to drug discovery and development. Its discovery has been heralded as "a major scientific breakthrough that happens once every decade or so," and represents one of the most promising and rapidly advancing frontiers in biology and drug discovery today, and was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. RNAi is a natural process of gene silencing that occurs in organisms ranging from plants to mammals. By harnessing the natural biological process of RNAi occurring in our cells, the creation of a major new class of medicines, known as RNAi therapeutics, is on the horizon. RNAi therapeutics target the cause of diseases by potently silencing specific messenger RNAs (mRNAs), thereby preventing disease-causing proteins from being made. RNAi therapeutics have the potential to treat disease and help patients in a fundamentally new way.

About Alnylam Pharmaceuticals

Alnylam is a biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics based on RNA interference, or RNAi. The company is applying its therapeutic expertise in RNAi to address significant medical needs, many of which cannot effectively be addressed with small molecules or antibodies, the current major classes of drugs. Alnylam is leading the translation of RNAi as a new class of innovative medicines with peer-reviewed research efforts published in the world's top scientific journals including Nature, Nature Medicine, and Cell. The company is leveraging these capabilities to build a broad pipeline of RNAi therapeutics; its most advanced program is in Phase II human clinical trials for the treatment of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. In addition, the company is developing RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of a wide range of disease areas, including hypercholesterolemia, liver cancers, and Huntington's disease. The company's leadership position in fundamental patents, technology, and know-how relating to RNAi has enabled it to form major alliances with leading companies including Medtronic, Novartis, Biogen Idec, and Roche. To reflect its outlook for key scientific, clinical, and business initiatives, Alnylam has established "RNAi 2010" which includes the company's plan to significantly expand the scope of delivery solutions for RNAi therapeutics, have four or more programs in clinical development, and to form four or more new major business collaborations, all by the end of 2010. Alnylam is a joint owner of Regulus Therapeutics LLC, a joint venture focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of microRNA therapeutics. Founded in 2002, Alnylam maintains headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.alnylam.com.

About Shanghai GenePharma

Shanghai GenePharma Co., Ltd is specialized in developing, manufacturing and supplying RNA synthesis monomers, modified RNA monomers, siRNA oligos, miRNA oligos, etc. Currently it is expanding quickly into large scale siRNA synthesis. At the same time, Shanghai GenePharma is very active in developing new chemically modified siRNA synthesis technologies, miRNA purification, detection technologies, and it started to supply comprehensive RNAi related services to academic and industrial customers. Founded in 2003, Shanghai GenePharma is headquartered in Shanghai, China, and serves thousands of research and industry customers worldwide through its global network of operations. For more information, visit www.genepharma.com.

Alnylam Forward-Looking Statements

Various statements in this release concerning Alnylam's future expectations, plans, and prospects, including its views with respect to the importance of its intellectual property rights, constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including risks related to: Alnylam's approach to discover and develop novel drugs, which is unproven and may never lead to marketable products; Alnylam's ability to fund and the results of further pre-clinical and clinical trials; obtaining, maintaining and protecting intellectual property utilized by its products; Alnylam's ability to enforce its patents against infringers and to defend its patent portfolio against challenges from third parties; Alnylam's ability to obtain additional funding to support its business activities; Alnylam's dependence on third parties for development, manufacture, marketing, sales, and distribution of products; the successful development of Alnylam's product candidates, all of which are in early stages of development; obtaining regulatory approval for products; competition from others using technology similar to Alnylam's and others developing products for similar uses; Alnylam's dependence on collaborators; and its short operating history; as well as those risks more fully discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our most recent report on Form 10-K on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent Alnylam's views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing its views as of any subsequent date. Alnylam does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Contact:

(Investors)
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Cynthia Clayton, 617-551-8207
or
(Media)
KMorrisPR
Kathryn Morris, 845-635-9828
or
Shanghai GenePharma Co., Ltd
Peter Zhang, 86 21 5132 0195
Chairman and CEO

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