Replies to post #60698 on Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

>Ambati said the main implications of his research are two fold:
1. for researchers to understand how siRNAs actually work
2. for clinical trials of siRNA to be approached with great caution.<

I would add a third implication: that investors ought to be particularly disciplined regarding the valuation of such companies as ALNY, RXII, and ROSG.

p.s. I’m impressed that you remembered the thread about Sirna-027.

[DewDiligence]

Sirna-027 for AMD is officially dead.

Sirna what? Sirna-027 was the much ballyhooed lead drug from Sirna Therapeutics, which the company licensed to AGN in 2005: #msg-7926760. (MRK acquired Sirna in 2006: #msg-14401261.)

Sirna-027 produced good phase-1 results; the biggest problem may have been that the duration of the clinical effect was too short, as can be seen from the table in #msg-12579143.

I’ve been pretty sure that this program was dead for quite some time because AGN never talked about it. Now, it’s 100% — read the last paragraph of this Reuters newswire:

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0746779920081207?rpc

››
“…we just completed a collaboration with Allergan looking at the eye and targets within the eye. Now we are initiating our own efforts within that area.”
‹‹

With the demise of Sirna-027, OPK (#msg-21124315, #msg-25128755) and PFE (#msg-13574577) are, to my knowledge, the only companies still testing RNAi in the clinic as a treatment for AMD. MRK at one time had a JV with ALNY to develop an AMD drug, but the collaboration made no progress and was dissolved in 2006.