Alnylam’s Distinguished Chemist Mano Manoharan Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics So...
October 15 2019 - 6:00AM
Business Wire
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), the leading RNAi
therapeutics company, announced today that Muthiah (Mano)
Manoharan, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Drug Innovation
Chemistry at Alnylam, has been awarded the 2019 Lifetime
Achievement Award from the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society
(OTS), an open, nonprofit organization to foster academia and
industry-based research and development of oligonucleotide
therapeutics. The OTS Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes Dr.
Manoharan’s enduring commitment to the field of oligonucleotide
therapeutics and his outstanding contributions to education,
research, and therapeutic application. Dr. Manoharan’s
accomplishments will be recognized at the 15th OTS Annual Meeting
in Munich, Germany, where he will give an award lecture entitled
“Living in the World of Oligonucleotide Therapeutics” today at
12:05 pm CEST.
“I am deeply humbled by this recognition from the OTS and have
been fortunate to work with countless passionate and creative
scientists throughout my career to transform complex chemistry into
medicines for people living with serious illnesses,” said Dr.
Manoharan. “As Alnylam’s first chemist, I’ve had the incredible
opportunity to drive and shape the development of RNAi therapeutics
alongside some of the community’s brightest minds. I owe this honor
to them and the community at large.”
“I congratulate Mano for receiving this highly esteemed award.
His efforts over the years have been instrumental in imparting
therapeutic potential to siRNAs and engineering delivery platforms
that have enabled reproducible gene silencing and the development
of a new class of medicines. Notably, Mano led Alnylam’s pioneering
advancement of siRNA conjugates,” said John Maraganore, Ph.D.,
Chief Executive Officer of Alnylam. “Without a doubt, this timely
recognition is well-deserved and warmly echoed by his Alnylam
colleagues.”
Dr. Manoharan is an internationally-renowned chemist in the
areas of oligonucleotide chemical modifications, conjugation
chemistry, and delivery platforms. He began working in the field of
oligonucleotides as a post-doctoral research associate at Yale
University in 1983, where he delineated the mechanism of action of
DNA repair enzymes using synthetic oligonucleotides. Following his
industrial career at Lifecodes Corporation starting in 1988 and
continuing at Isis Pharmaceuticals since 1990, he moved to Alnylam
in 2003. At Alnylam, he pioneered the discovery and development of
the chemical modifications that have enabled the delivery of
siRNAs, leading to the development of ONPATTRO® (patisiran), the
first RNAi therapeutic approved by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration in 2018. Dr. Manoharan and his research group also
demonstrated for the first time the human therapeutic applications
of GalNAc-conjugated oligonucleotides, a platform that is regarded
as having revolutionized the field of nucleic acid-based
therapeutics. He is an author of more than 215 publications and
over 400 abstracts, as well as an inventor on more than 240 issued
U.S. patents.
About RNAi RNAi (RNA interference) is a natural cellular
process of gene silencing that represents one of the most promising
and rapidly advancing frontiers in biology and drug development
today. Its discovery has been heralded as “a major scientific
breakthrough that happens once every decade or so,” and was
recognized with the award of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or
Medicine. By harnessing the natural biological process of RNAi
occurring in our cells, a new class of medicines, known as RNAi
therapeutics, is now a reality. Small interfering RNA (siRNA), the
molecules that mediate RNAi and comprise Alnylam's RNAi therapeutic
platform, function upstream of today’s medicines by potently
silencing messenger RNA (mRNA) – the genetic precursors – that
encode for disease-causing proteins, thus preventing them from
being made. This is a revolutionary approach with the potential to
transform the care of patients with genetic and other diseases.
About Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Alnylam (Nasdaq: ALNY) is
leading the translation of RNA interference (RNAi) into a new class
of innovative medicines with the potential to transform the lives
of people afflicted with rare genetic, cardio-metabolic, hepatic
infectious, and central nervous system/ocular diseases. Based on
Nobel Prize-winning science, RNAi therapeutics represent a
powerful, clinically validated approach for the treatment of
diseases with high unmet need. Alnylam’s first commercial RNAi
therapeutic is ONPATTRO® (patisiran), approved in the U.S., EU,
Canada, Japan, and Switzerland. Alnylam has a deep pipeline of
investigational medicines, including five product candidates in
Phase 3 studies and one in registration. Looking forward, Alnylam
will continue to execute on its "Alnylam 2020" strategy of building
a multi-product, commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company with a
sustainable pipeline of RNAi-based medicines to address the needs
of patients who have limited or inadequate treatment options.
Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Alnylam employs over 1,200 people
worldwide. For more information about our people, science and
pipeline, please visit www.alnylam.com and engage with us on
Twitter at @Alnylam or on LinkedIn.
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Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Christine Regan Lindenboom
(Investors and Media)
617-682-4340
Josh Brodsky
(Investors) 617-551-8276
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