A day after Roche's blockbuster announcement that it will seek to buy out Genentech for more than $43 billion, the company reported a much smaller acquisition of biotech Mirus Bio Corporation for $125 million.

The deal is an incremental step in Roche's strategy to build up its RNAi portfolio; last year, the firm inked a much larger deal, potentially worth more than $1 billion, with Alnylam, which included the acquisition of Alnylam's Kumlach, Germany, research site (¹ Also see "Alnylam Signs Billion Dollar RNAi Deal With Roche" - Pink Sheet, 9 July, 2007.).

Madison, Wisc.-based Mirus develops RNAi therapies with its proprietary Dynamic PolyConjugates system, a targeted systemic siRNA delivery platform that currently is being optimized for liver and cancer tissues.

"The technology brought by Mirus, together with additional technologies [in development], will bring us closer to creating fully enabled RNAi therapeutics," Roche Global Head of Pharma Lee E. Babiss said.

Under the agreement, Mirus' Madison research site will be maintained, while Roche intends to divest Mirus' transfection reagents division into a standalone business.

Mirus also is developing therapeutics via its gene-delivery platform, Pathway IV . The lead program, on which it is partnered with French company Transgene, is a gene therapy for muscular dystrophy.

In early 2007, Mirus entered into a two-year agreement with Pfizer to use its gene-silencing technology to develop animal models (² Also see "Pfizer Invests In Potential New Drug Class" - Pink Sheet, 9 January, 2007.).

Roche and Pfizer are just two of the big pharmas that have entered the RNAi space through licensing deals or acquisitions; other players include Takeda and Novartis, which also have deals with Alnylam, and Merck, which acquired Sirna Therapeutics in 2006.

Separately, Roche announced it was handing back rights to license Isotechnika's voclosporin for solid organ transplantation.

-Brooke McManus (b.mcmanus@elsevier.com)

Roche Keeps Shopping: Mirus Acquisition Bolsters RNAi Portfolio

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