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Biotech / Medical : RNAi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tuck who wrote (8)	5/22/2003 11:48:28 AM
From: tuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 671

>>NATICK, Mass., May 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Sequitur, Inc. announced today that its agreement to provide Procter & Gamble (P&G) Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: PG - News) with access to its functional genomics technology has been renewed and expanded. Sequitur will perform biological screening and supply its proprietary antisense/RNAi compounds and methods to P& G Pharmaceuticals for use in its target validation studies as part of the multi-year agreement. The agreement has been expanded to include additional therapeutic areas. Sequitur's proprietary functional genomics technology accelerates drug discovery by helping to identify the triggers of disease. Sequitur's technology is a tool for determining the function of the human genetic code. Antisense/RNAi can help to determine gene function and validate small molecule drug targets by specifically inhibiting gene expression. Sequitur's Functional Genomics Program offers second and third generation antisense compounds (including RNAi), collaborative research and cell transfection optimization. Tod Woolf, Sequitur's CEO, noted, "We are gratified that our agreement with Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, which is one of our largest collaborations, has been extended and expanded. This will extend our work with P&G into its third year." Larry Games, P&G Pharmaceuticals Vice President of R&D Stated, "We have been pleased with this collaboration. Sequitur has been a good working partner, participating in a collaborative relationship and providing cutting edge technologies which allow P & G Pharmaceuticals to rapidly assess new targets in our Discovery pipeline." Sequitur is a privately held corporation that offers products and services to modulate and detect gene expression. Sequitur also offers collaborations to develop therapeutic RNAi compounds. Sequitur's other clients include Bristol-Myers Squibb, Incyte, Amgen, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Genentech, Roche, Schering-Plough, Wyeth and others.<< snip Cheers, Tuck

To: tuck who wrote (8)	5/27/2003 3:16:58 PM
From: tuck	Respond to of 671

Rosetta scientists claim siRNA can go off target, these folks from Stanford seem to disagree. Who's right? is it a matter of how the siRNAs are designed? Very interesting controversy. Both teams used gene expression data and seem to have arrived at different conclusions . . . >>Published online before print May 13, 2003, 10.1073/pnas.1131959100 PNAS \| May 27, 2003 \| vol. 100 \| no. 11 \| 6347-6352 BIOCHEMISTRY Specificity of short interfering RNA determined through gene expression signatures Dimitri Semizarov , Leigh Frost, Aparna Sarthy, Paul Kroeger, Donald N. Halbert and Stephen W. Fesik Global Pharmaceutical Research and Development, Abbott Laboratories, 100 Abbott Park Road, Abbott Park, IL 60064 Communicated by Peter B. Dervan, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, April 3, 2003 (received for review January 31, 2003) Short interfering RNA (siRNA) is widely used for studying gene function and holds great promise as a tool for validating drug targets and treating disease. A critical assumption in these applications is that the effect of siRNA on cells is specific, i.e., limited to the specific knockdown of the target gene. In this article, we characterize the specificity of siRNA by applying gene expression profiling. Several siRNAs were designed against different regions of the same target gene for three different targets. Their effects on cells were compared by using DNA microarrays to generate gene expression signatures. When the siRNA design and transfection conditions were optimized, the signatures for different siRNAs against the same target were shown to correlate very closely, whereas the signatures for different genes revealed no correlation. These results indicate that siRNA is a highly specific tool for targeted gene knockdown, establishing siRNA-mediated gene silencing as a reliable approach for large-scale screening of gene function and drug target validation. << Cheers, Tuck