One more licencing deal for April 09

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.(Nasdaq:ALNY) market cap of around 800 million and Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.((Nasdaq: ISIS) market cap more than 1B announced yesterday about a new collaboration focused on developing single-stranded RNAi (ssRNAi) Under this deal Alnylam will pay licensing fess of $31M, which will be payable in the form of $11M for deal signing, $10 million after 18months or earlier in vivo preclinical studies in rodent, $5M after the studies further progress in non-human primates and atlast $5M after the beginning of Phase1 clinical trial.

ISIS is a drug discovery and Development Company and Alnylam will be funding research worth $3M each year for next three years for research development activities conducted at these two companies. If Alnylam in its own develops and commercializes their ssRNAi technology with or without a partner, Isis will receive milestones and royalties. And initially Isis is eligible to receive up to 50 percent of sublicense payments from Alnylam on Alnylam or its partnership for ssRNAi products, On the other way Alnylam is eligible to receive up to 5 percent of any sublicense payments due to Isis based on Isis’ partnering of ssRNAi products. Eventually both the companies are eligible to receive royalties from each other on any ssRNAi products developed by any of them within or with outside partnering