Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Scientists and Collaborators Publish New Article in Nature Describing Discovery of Central Gene in Mitochondrial Physiology

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, and collaborators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Broad Institute, and the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), today announced new findings published in Nature (Baughman et al., Nature advance online publication 19 June 2011; doi: 10.1038/nature10234). Using an “integrative genomics” strategy that included RNAi technology, the study identified for the first time the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU), which regulates calcium transport into mitochondria. This new discovery now enables molecular studies on mitochondrial calcium physiology with implications for advancement of new medicines across a broad range of diseases.