CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 6, 2006--Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded the company a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to advance the development of RNAi therapeutics for pandemic influenza. The SBIR grant will provide Alnylam with approximately $590,000 in funding over a one-year period to support the company's research efforts on small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), the molecules that mediate RNAi, as anti-viral drugs with broad spectrum activity toward multiple influenza strains including the H5N1 virus.
