As previously announced on 30 May 2017, the US Patent Office issued a notice of allowance for US patent application 14/977,710, which has now issued as US patent 9,695,423.
This US patent provides further protection for Silence’s innovative chemical modification technology in the US. Silence believes the granted claims are relevant to third party medicines in ongoing clinical trials.
Chemical modification technology is vital to prevent the degradation of therapeutic short interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules and to enable potent RNA interference (RNAi).
The use of such technology has a substantial impact on the performance of RNAi based drugs and as such is also used in third party RNAi medicines.
Ali Mortazavi, CEO of Silence Therapeutics, said: “The grant of US 9,695,423 is further confirmation by the US Patent Office of the validity of our patent claims that protect our innovative chemical modification technology. As previously stated, we will consider potential licences under our patent estate, which could have a significant financial effect relative to the current market capitalisation of Silence.”