Santaris Pharma Awarded DKK 45 Million to Enhance Discovery of RNA Medicines

Santaris Pharma has announced that the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation has awarded a major program grant of DKK 45 Million towards the development of a high-throughput drug discovery platform for novel RNA medicines.

The project will be based on Santaris Pharma's proprietary LNA drug chemistry and the screening platform will be developed by a collaborative Research Consortium led by Santaris Pharma and the Biotech Research & Innovation Centre at the University of Copenhagen. Other members of the Consortium are the Nucleic Acid Centre, University of Southern Denmark, H. Lundbeck A/S, the Danish headquartered pharmaceutical company and RiboTask A/S, the Danish reagents company.

The three year program will enable Santaris Pharma to identify 3-5 new RNA drug candidates. Santaris Pharma owns the worldwide exclusive rights to develop innovative new drugs based on LNA technology. Santaris Pharma and H. Lundbeck will collaborate on the development of potential neurological drugs arising from the platform.

Read the full press release here.

Source: Press release, Santaris Pharma, 15.05.2008