Another Partnership For Alnylam

One of my favorite biotechs (and one that I own), Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ALNY), announced yet another partnership tied to its microRNA/RNAi technology.

Tuesday morning, Alnylam announced that Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY) had formed a research and development partnership with Regulus Therapeutics. Regulus is a 50/50 joint venture between Alnylam and antisense pioneer Isis Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ISIS). As part of the three-year deal, Sanofi is sending a $25 million initial payment to Regulus, and Sanofi will pay for all of the R&D during the deal. Sanofi also has the option to extend the deal for an additional two years, and could send as much as $750 million to the partnership if various development milestones are met (that's a BIG if, and predicated on multiple clinical successes for multiple compounds). The deal may also include a $10M equity investment in Regulus if the parties can agree to a price.

The deal will initially cover the potential use of microRNA for the treatment of fibroids (four different targets), but could expand even further.

Now, partnerships are nothing new for Alnylam (nor Regulus, as there's also a deal in place with Glaxo). The company already had lucrative deals with the likes of Roche, Novartis, and Takeda. That Big Pharma validation is certainly part of why Alnylam is considered the leader in RNAi, and the company has an impressive amount of  IP to back up its promise (over 300 patents to date).

This isn't the time or the post where I'm going to go into detail on why I like Alnylam. But I will say this is one of the most interesting biotechs I've seen in a long, long time and while there is nothing like a "sure thing" in biotech, I'm actually allowing myself to get a little excited about the potential of this one. Then again, I once thought the same thing about Isis and although I profited from my ownership in those shares, that never worked out as I had hoped.

Disclosure: I own shares of Alnylam