SUWON, Republic of Korea, May 24, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OliX Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (KOSDAQ: 226950), a leading developer of RNAi therapeutics, announced that the Company has received a notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for an enhanced platform technology that aims to improve the potency of RNAi therapeutics by increasing delivery of siRNA to target cells. The technology will be applied initially to the Company’s investigational therapeutics targeting eye and skin diseases.
The technology, which is patented in Korea, is designed to increase cellular uptake of siRNA by administering an L-type calcium channel blocker, a type of small molecule, in combination with siRNA. In a preclinical study published in Molecular Pharmaceutics, scientists from OliX Pharmaceuticals and Sungkyunkwan University found that L-type calcium channel blockers increased cellular uptake of cholesterol-conjugated, cell-penetrating asymmetric siRNAs (cp-asiRNAs). Furthermore, the L-type calcium channel blockers improved the potency of cp-asiRNAs both in vitro and in vivo in rat skin.
“Developing methods of delivering siRNA to target cells in an efficient manner is crucial to improving the efficacy of RNAi therapeutics,” said Dong Ki Lee, founder and chief executive officer of OliX Pharmaceuticals. “By applying our intracellular delivery technology to investigational therapeutics in our pipeline, we can differentiate our platform and accelerate the pace of preclinical and clinical development across our programs.”
About OliX Pharmaceuticals
OliX Pharmaceuticals is a clinical stage pharmaceutical company developing therapeutics against a variety of disorders by down-regulating expression of disease-causing genes, based on its own proprietary RNAi technology. The Company’s core RNAi platform, asymmetric siRNA (asiRNA), is a unique gene silencing technology based on RNA interference (RNAi), which is considered as the most efficient gene silencing technology. Based on asiRNA technology, OliX has developed cell penetrating asiRNA (cp-asiRNA), a therapeutic RNAi platform to effectively target locally administrable diseases, such as hypertrophic scar, dry and wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), subretinal fibrosis, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), and neuropathic pain. OliX has also developed another therapeutic RNAi platform, GalNAc-asiRNA, to target a variety of liver diseases.
To learn more about the company, visit https://www.olixpharma.com/eng/
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