Oncology is back for siRNA, courtesy of AbbVie

The private company ADARx Pharmaceuticals specialises in RNA therapeutics, but hasn't had a presence in oncology – until now. The change has come thanks to a lucrative deal struck on Wednesday with AbbVie, worth $335m up front. This spells an important payday for ADARx, whose last venture capital round appears to have been a $200m series C in August 2023. At the time ADARx's lead projects were in hereditary angioedema and complement-mediated diseases, but the AbbVie alliance includes the application of ADARx's technology to develop siRNA therapeutics for oncology, among other uses. However, nothing has yet been disclosed about cancer types, targets, or development timelines. siRNA (small interfering RNA) is a class of double-stranded RNA molecules that can be targeted at specific mRNAs to knock down gene expression. There isn't a huge amount of industry work in applying siRNA to cancer, but clinical trials are under way at companies including Sirnaomics and the micro cap Phio Pharmaceuticals. In 2021 Novo Nordisk paid $3.3bn to buy Dicerna, which brought with it siRNA-based projects targeting PD-L1 (DCR-PDL1) and Stat3 (DCR-STAT3), and these are now in the clinic.