Isis Awarded $1.5 Million NIH Grant to Improve Chemical Properties of RNAi-Based Th...( Phase 2 SBIR Grant Funding to Advan...)

Phase 2 SBIR Grant Funding to Advance the Development of Single-Stranded

Antisense RNAi Drugs

CARLSBAD, Calif., Oct. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ISIS) today announced that it has been awarded a multi-year Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for up to $1.5 million to design oligonucleotide drugs that can exploit the RNA interference (RNAi) antisense mechanism for disease treatment. The Phase 2 grant builds upon a successfully completed Phase 1 program that demonstrated the feasibility of using single-stranded antisense drugs to target the RNAi pathway.

"We are pleased with the continued support from the NIH in our ongoing efforts to apply our RNA technologies, oligonucleotide chemistries and expertise to exploit antisense mechanisms, such as RNAi, for therapeutic benefit. Based on our extensive work with single-stranded antisense drugs that work through an RNase H mechanism and the feasibility studies we have completed with single-stranded antisense drugs that harness the RNAi pathway, we are optimistic that the two drug families will share certain characteristics, including bioavailability and tissue distribution," said C. Frank Bennett, PhD, Senior Vice President of Research at Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. "At Isis, we have a rich history of pioneering work in RNA-targeted drug discovery, and with this research we are continuing to expand the ways in which we can harness biological phenomena with compounds exhibiting chemical properties that enable development of practical, safe and attractive drugs."

The multi-year grant will fund research by Isis to improve the stability an
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