Since Craig C. Mello and Andrew Fire published a paper in Nature on the gene-silencing effect of RNA interference in 1998 (for which they won a Nobel Prize in 2006), scientists have been working on clinical applications for the technique, which uses small snippets of RNA to silence a cell’s expression of genes that cause disease.
The newest company trying to commercialize therapeutics based on RNAi is Arcturus Therapeutics, which disclosed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week that it’s raising a $1.3 million round.
Formed in 2013, the San Diego-based company appears to be keeping a low profile; its website is minimal and no one responded to an email inquiry. The company only says that it’s working on “RNAi technologies for the treatment of disease.”
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That’s a pretty big task, though. RNAi has been thought to harness potential in treating cancer and other chronic conditions caused by mutated genes such as HIV, hepatitis C and macular degeneration, but researchers have struggled to turn the technique into commercializable drugs.
Some Big Pharmas have been making slow progress on RNAi drugs. Others, like Roche, have walked away from their attempts. But smaller companies like Solstice Biologics, Marina Biotech and Tekmira are continuing to work on drugs, and some recent transactions have suggested that Big Pharma may be renewing its interest.
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