CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, today announced the publication of new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Alnylam scientists and collaborators from the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research and the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). These new findings (Huang et al. (February 10, 2009) Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0813348106) demonstrate that RNAi silencing of the claudin-3 protein using lipidoid formulations of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs, the molecules that mediate RNAi) results in the suppression of ovarian tumor growth and metastases. Claudin-3 is a tight junction protein that is highly over-expressed in approximately 90% of ovarian tumors. Previous in vitro studies have shown that the over-expression of claudin-3 promotes migration, invasion, and increased survival of ovarian cancer cells.
