Silence receives patent protection for cancer drug

The European Patent Office announced that it intends to grant a European patent covering Silence’s lead internal product candidate. This patent will give Silence broad exclusivity not only for Atu027, but for any siRNA targeting protein kinase N beta.

The candidate is said to be designed to silence the function of a novel kinase protein involved in tumor growth and metastases and utilizes Silence Therapeutics’s proprietary drug delivery system AtuPLEX to deliver active drug into the appropriate cells following systemic administration.

Atu027 is a proprietary AtuRNAi molecule currently in development for solid cancer indications, including gastrointestinal and lung cancers.