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[thekrup]

MRNA- looking into this one trying to find what could be on the horizon here and some have stated this is a good buy and I stumbled onto this from a board. Take it FWIW.


Message from poster:

"I picked this up from the genomeweb RNAi News -The link bellow probably won’t work and I am not sure that I clipped the whole article as I could not obtained the last part. The info posted here is already known by us but perhaps a bit convoluted; the article is clearer and better organized. Perhaps some of the sellers will change their minds and reconsider. Stockholders have clearly overreacted for no apparent reason. MRNA is a great little company with top of the line management and first class scientists."


MDRNA Eyes Second 'Early Collaborative Effort' Before Year-End, Large Alliance in 2010
November 19, 2009

By Doug Macron
Officials from MDRNA last week said that the company is on track to sign a second early-stage technology-evaluation deal with a large biopharmaceutical partner before the end of the year, and that it continues to expect it will forge a separate strategic research and development alliance by the middle of 2010.

“Our strategic partnering objectives are to establish target- and/or therapeutic-based research and development collaborations” that include up-front fees, research funding, milestone payments, and royalties, June Ameen, MDRNA’s vice president of corporate development, said during a conference call held last week to discuss the company’s third-quarter financial results.

“In striving to achieve our strategic partnering objectives, we view early collaborative efforts as a means to establishing broader R&D collaborations with certain partners,” she noted. “In August, the company entered into one of these early collaborative efforts with a large, international pharmaceutical company to demonstrate the broad capabilities of both our proprietary RNAi drug-discovery engine and our … research team.”

That collaboration is focused on optimizing MDRNA’s so-called DiLA2 drug-delivery platform for use in carrying RNAi molecules to a specific, undisclosed tissue system, and is unrelated to the company’s work on liver and bladder delivery, she said. “At this point, we are unable to disclose the name of the company, but we can report that the collaboration is progressing as anticipated.”

Meanwhile, “We’re having ongoing discussions with multiple large, international pharmaceutical companies … [and] expect to establish at least one more early collaborative effort by the end of the year,” Ameen added.

During the call, MDRNA President and CEO Michael French noted that the company also anticipates signing at least one “large, strategic R&D collaboration” by mid-2010, adding that such a deal could enable the firm to expand its pipeline beyond the current programs in liver and bladder cancers.

Currently, work on those indications is proceeding apace, and French confirmed during the call that MDRNA still expects to file an investigational new drug application on either a liver cancer or bladder cancer candidate before the end of next year.
While liver cancer had initially been MDRNA’s most-developed program, last month French told RNAi News that the bladder cancer effort has been so promising that it might jump to the head of the queue and yield the company’s first IND (see RNAi News, 10/15/2009).

At the same time, MDRNA continues to optimize its drug formulations in non-human primates as part of an effort that was first disclosed this summer (see RNAi News, 8/6/2009).
While French declined to provide specific details on that work in response to an analyst’s question during the conference call, the company did release some data last week, stating that a single, systemic, 0.3 mg/kg dose of its UsiRNA constructs, delivered in two distinct DiLA2 formulations, resulted in the significant knockdown of a primate liver gene.

Meanwhile, work on MDRNA’s liver and bladder cancer programs proceeds apace, and the company continues to expect it will file its first investigational new drug application before the end of next year.