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Roche Exits RNAi, Raising Questions For Stalwarts

In mid-November, in a move that seemingly came from the top, Roche opted to cease all activity in RNA interference technology, preferring to invest in other areas like next-generation antibodies and peptide therapeutics. These days RNAi company Alnylam might have some difficult questions to answer about its business development strategy - only nobody's really asking. That's because even as Roche weighs its options around divestiture of its RNAi license, technology and research sites, the future of Alnylam - and the field of RNAi more generally - is now tied solely to establishing clinical proof-of-concept for siRNA drugs, and eventually getting those drugs to market.

There was a time when the most pressing question Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. had to answer about its dealmaking strategy concerned the number of times it could non-exclusively license its RNA interference technology before the value of the company's IP began to suffer. When Alnylam signed its landmark $331 million up-front 2007 deal with Roche – followed soon by a similarly rich deal with Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. in 2008 – the company was a business development juggernaut, filling its coffers with up-front cash gained through monetizing its platform non-exclusively on an unprecedented scale. [See Deal][See Deal] ( See "Alnylam Takes Platform Monetization to a Whole New and Non-Exclusive Level," IN VIVO , July 2007 Also see "Alnylam Takes Platform Monetization to a Whole New and Non-Exclusive Level" - In Vivo, 1 July, 2007..)

But in mid-November, in a move that seemingly came from the top, Roche opted to cease all activity in RNAi,...

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