CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today publication of a study in the journal Cell by Alnylam and Stanford University scientists on the role of miRNAs in immunity. In the pre-clinical study, a specific miRNA, miR-181a, was shown to play an important role in controlling T cell responsiveness to antigens by regulating the T cell receptor signaling pathway. Because the T cell response to antigens is one of the primary components of certain autoimmune disorders, these findings further validate miRNAs as disease targets and point to new potential therapeutic applications for antagomirs, a novel class of oligonucleotide-based inhibitors of specific miRNAs.
