CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, today announced the publication of a study in the journal Nature Biotechnology by Alnylam and scientific collaborators from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) related to mechanisms for in vivo delivery of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), the molecules that mediate RNAi. In the study, lipid-conjugates of siRNAs that facilitate in vivo systemic delivery (Soutschek et al., Nature 432, 173-178 (2004)) were found to associate with circulating lipoprotein particles and to achieve cellular uptake through receptors for low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and high-density lipoproteins (HDL), in addition to the mammalian homologue for a channel-like cell surface protein that mediates transport of siRNAs in nematodes and fruit flies.
