University of Massachusetts and Dharmacon in RNAi collaboration

The University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) and Dharmacon, a US-based global supplier of innovative RNA and RNA-interference (RNAi) research products, have entered into a collaboration to use RNAi to study obesity and diabetes.

Dharmacon will design and supply siRNA reagents for studies that will be directed by Dr Michael Czech, professor and chair of molecular medicine at UMMS, to assess several thousand gene targets over a three-year period.

'RNAi represents a potentially valuable new approach for unravelling the mechanisms underlying diseases like diabetes and obesity that are reaching epidemic proportions,' said Dr Czech. 'We expect Dharmacon's siRNA duplexes and reagents will give us the exceptional accuracy we need to support our high throughput research efforts and the reliability to move forward without the need to retest our results.'

RNAi uses short sequences of RNA (siRNA) to silence the expression of specific genes targeted for study, thereby accelerating investigations across a broad range of biomedical and biological research. Dharmacon's SMARTselection and SMARTpool technologies create potent and specific agents that guarantee gene silencing.

UMMS researchers will share study data with Dharmacon to provide Dharmacon with evidence of the effectiveness of its siRNA technologies.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.