As per the agreement, miRagen will provide Silence with specific miRNA sequences, which Silence will formulate with its proprietary DBTC delivery system to develop multiple candidate drugs.
MiRagen will undertake in vitro and in vivo studies of the candidate drugs developed under the agreement and select lead candidates for further evaluation.
Financial terms of the collaboration have not not disclosed.
DBTC is a proprietary RNAi delivery system developed by Silence.
The novel lipid-based formulation functionally delivers short interfering RNA (siRNA) to liver endothelial cells, hepatocytes and other liver cell types with high efficiency.
Silence CEO Thomas Christely said their three proprietary RNAi delivery systems, AtuPLEX, DACC and DBTC deliver effective doses of RNAi to intracellular targets in vascular endothelium, lung and liver respectively.