Oct 22 2008
Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an RNA interference company developing novel therapeutics in multiple disease areas, today announced that Bob D. Brown, Ph.D., senior vice president of research, Dicerna, and Dicerna co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board member Mark Behlke, M.D., Ph.D., vice president of molecular genetics and biophysics and chief scientific officer at Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT), will present at the Discovery on Target Conference at the World Trade Center in Boston, Mass. The conference will be held October 20-23, 2008, and is broken up into several sub-conferences. Dicerna will lead sessions at two of these sub-conferences, including the 6th Annual RNAi for Screening Conference, as well as the 2nd Annual RNAi for Therapeutics Conference.
During the RNAi for Screening Conference on October 22, Dr. Brown will lead a breakout session titled Making RNAi Therapies a Reality at 7:30 a.m. (ET), followed by an executive forum titled RNAi: How to Best Transition from the Lab to the Clinic at 11:10 a.m. (ET).
On October 22, at the RNAi for Therapeutics Conference, Dr. Brown will lead a session titled Dicer-substrate Oligonucleotides (DsiRNAs) as Therapeutic Leads at 4:50 p.m. (ET). During his presentation, Dr. Brown will share information about the innovative bioinformatics and high-throughput screening technology used by Dicerna to identify the most effective Dicer Substrate RNAs (DsiRNAs) against therapeutic target genes. On October 23, Dr. Behlke, will chair the afternoon session titled Addressing Safety and Manufacturing Concerns beginning at 1:55 p.m. (ET). Dr. Behlke will also present Manufacturing RNA Duplexes for Research and Pre-Clinical Studies during this session at 4:10 p.m. (ET), in which he will discuss IDT’s approaches to manufacturing quality synthetic RNA oligonucleotides for RNAi research utilizing Dicerna’s Dicer Substrate Technology.
“We are excited that Dicerna is playing an integral role in both the 2nd Annual RNAi for Therapeutics Conference and the 6th Annual RNAi for Screening Conference,” commented Dr. Brown. “Dicerna is emerging as a leader in the RNAi community due to our unique second-generation approach using DsiRNA to reduce target gene expression. These DsiRNAs are processed by the enzyme Dicer, which is an ideal point for synthetic RNA to enter the RNAi cascade. It has been observed that DsiRNAs have increased potency and duration of action compared to first generation siRNAs. We look forward to discussing our novel Dicer Substrate Technology and continued research of DsiRNAs as drug candidates at the Discovery on Target Conference.”
“We look forward to participating in this year’s Discovery on Target conference,” said Dr. Behlke. “The conference will be an excellent forum to share with our peers in the drug discovery community Dicerna’s pioneering scientific approaches in the development of novel, potent and selective RNAi-based drugs.”