Date: 2014-11-11
Type of information: Initiation of development program
phase:
Announcement: initiation of the development program
Company: Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (USA - MA)
Product: ALN-PDL
Action
mechanism: ALN-PDL is an RNAi therapeutic targeting hepatocyte-expressed programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1).
Disease: chronic liver infections
Therapeutic area: Hepatic diseases - Liver diseases - Infectious diseases
Country:
Trial details:
Latest
news: * On November 11, 2014, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced that it has expanded its hepatic infectious disease pipeline. The company has added ALN-PDL, an RNAi therapeutic targeting hepatocyte-expressed programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) in development for the treatment of chronic liver infections. PD-L1 is a cell surface protein that is believed to play a major role in suppressing the immune system in cancer and infection. HBV and HCV infection of hepatocytes is known to lead to increased PD-L1 expression2 which could subdue the immune response against the virus. Further, monoclonal antibodies targeting PD-L1 and its T-cell ligand PD-1 have shown anti-viral effects in pre-clinical and early clinical studies3, but are also associated with systemic toxicities. ALN-PDL is aimed at knocking down liver-expressed PD-L1 to reactivate an immune response against liver viral infection without the systemic toxicities observed with monoclonal antibody therapy. In pre-clinical studies published previously by Alnylam and collaborators, an siRNA targeting PD-L1 was shown to increase the endogenous immune response and viral clearance in a mouse model of liver adenovirus infection. Alnylam plans to advance ALN-PDL as an ESC-GalNAc-siRNA conjugate.
