CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today the presentation of new pre-clinical data from its hypercholesterolemia program, performed in collaboration with scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. The data were presented at the PCSK9 Conference: From Gene to Therapeutics held in Nantes, France from March 11-13, 2010. Alnylam has an ongoing development program focused on using RNAi therapeutics targeting proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9, or PCSK9, as a novel strategy for reducing LDL (or “bad”) cholesterol. The new data demonstrated durable reductions of cholesterol levels in both rodents and non-human primates with an RNAi therapeutic targeting PCSK9 using second generation lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulations. Further, data also showed the ability to utilize siRNA combination approaches to achieve efficient silencing of separate and distinct genes to achieve cholesterol lowering.
