Tod Woolf, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of RXi Pharmaceuticals, commented, “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.”
Dr. Woolf continued, “We believe that RXi has one of the most comprehensive RNAi therapeutic technology platforms in the industry, which now includes oral, as well as local (CNS) and systemic delivery (nanotransporters) technology. It is widely believed that delivery technologies are key to enabling the successful commercialization of RNAi interference drug candidates and RXi has made great strides in acquiring and developing its various platforms in order to deliver proprietary, next generation rxRNA compounds to specific target tissues and diseases.”
Going forward, management noted, RXi intends to work with pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners to advance the discovery and development of orally delivered rxRNA therapeutics for a host of inflammatory diseases.