Under the terms of the expanded agreement, Dicerna will receive a cash payment for exercise by Kyowa Hakko Kirin of an option to bring an additional target into the collaboration.
With this expanded collaboration, Dicerna will be actively working in the therapeutic areas of oncology, endocrinology, immunology and inflammation.
Earlier, in January 2010, the companies signed a research collaboration and license agreement worth up to $1.4bn for the research, development and commercialisation of DsiRNA pharmaceuticals and drug delivery systems for therapeutic targets in oncology.
Dicerna CEO Douglas Fambrough said that they are pleased to broaden their current research collaboration and license agreement with Kyowa Hakko Kirin into the areas of immunology and inflammation.
"This new agreement is a vote of confidence in Dicerna and in the promise of our DsiRNA molecules, which have demonstrated potency and longer duration of action in preclinical models, and have the potential to overcome the limitations of other RNAi approaches," Fambrough said.