Cyclacel announces RNAi collaboration

UK-based biopharmaceutical company Cyclacel has entered into a four-way collaboration with an undisclosed major global pharmaceutical company, Cancer Research Technology (CRT) and the University of Cambridge to perfect the use of RNA interference (RNAi) technology for target validation and drug discovery.

The new collaboration is aimed at improving RNAi technology in mammalian cells to allow the generation of new disease models and systems for analysing mammalian gene expression.

The venture will draw mainly on the expertise of Professor David Glover, chief scientist of Cyclacel's Polgen division. In 1999, Professor Glover and colleagues first demonstrated RNAi-mediated inhibition of gene activity in mammalian cells. Under the terms of the partnership, the parties have combined their intellectual property and skills to jointly develop the use of the RNAi technique as a tool in target validation, drug discovery and development. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The parties will pursue advances made in the research programme for their own drug discovery projects. In addition CRT will commercially exploit certain technologies discovered by the collaboration and offer them to third parties against payment of royalties to Cyclacel and the pharmaceutical company

Polgen uses RNAi in the screening of the Drosophila genome to identify genes involved in the mitotic process, which in turn allows the identification of comparable genes in humans. These genes are then investigated as potential druggable targets based on the understanding of cell cycle biology in diseases such as cancer.

'RNA interference is one of the most exciting recent developments in molecular biology allowing for rapid validation of gene-derived drug targets,' said Professor Glover. 'This functional genomics technology dramatically accelerates the pace of elucidating the function of candidate genes over previous techniques and is applicable to virtually all genes.'