10/14/08 - RXi Pharmaceuticals Corporation (Nasdaq: RXII), a biopharmaceutical company pursuing the development and commercialization of proprietary therapeutics based on RNA interference (RNAi), today announced that it has licensed exclusive worldwide rights from the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) to certain technology for the oral delivery of RNAi therapeutics...... "The development of technology that potentially enables oral delivery represents a truly dramatic advance for the field of RNAi therapeutics, and could open up significant market opportunities for RXi. We view this license as a major step toward our goal of developing such drugs as it allows us to potentially target a new class of cells that cannot be accessed either by traditional RNAi delivery methods, local administration or injection. In particular, we believe that UMMS' oral delivery technology, which targets certain types of inflammatory cells called macrophages, may allow us to develop orally administered rxRNA compounds for the treatment of a variety of significant inflammatory diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, Crohn's disease, atherosclerosis, psoriasis and Type II diabetes. Since some of the most advanced and successful anti-inflammatory drugs currently on the market require injection, an orally administered RNAi compound could have significant competitive advantages for both patients and physicians."... RXi Pharmaceuticals' Press Release -
