CARLSBAD, Calif. & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ISIS) and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY) announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a Notice of Allowance for U.S. patent application (No. 10/078,949) in the “Crooke” patent family, which broadly covers chemically modified RNA-containing therapeutics. Specifically, the allowed Crooke application includes 75 claims covering methods of using chemically modified double-stranded RNA-containing compounds to activate an RNA nuclease (RNase). The activation of the endogenous cellular RNase “argonaute 2” by double-stranded small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) is a central step in RNAi, resulting in the sequence-specific cleavage of target mRNA.
