RNAi therapeutics — are the naysayers about to be proven wrong?

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ALNY), which with some justification bills itself as the leading RNAi company, isn’t shy of mentioning the Nobel-prize winning provenance of its science and technology.

In 1998, research published in Nature by Andrew Fire and Craig Mello at the Carnegie Institution and at University of Massachusetts showed how snippets of RNA can fool cells into destroying messenger RNA (mRNA), effectively silencing certain genes.

In 2006, the pair were handed the award, "for their discovery of RNA interference - gene silencing by double-stranded RNA.”