From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sat Mar 08 2003 - 01:14:47 MST
http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_10/b3823094.htm
<<...Why shell out so much for a troubled drug developer? Because Ribozyme
has refocused its research on an experimental cell-based therapy that
scientists call one of the biggest biological breakthroughs of the last two
decades. The mechanism it seeks to exploit may amount to an off-switch for
some disease processes in human cells. Scientists activate the switch by
introducing small double strands of RNA, the same messenger molecules that
translate DNA code into proteins. Knowledge of this process, called RNA
interference (RNAi), is so preliminary that, until two years ago, the
technique worked only in plants, worms, and fungi.
Since then, RNAi has swept science faster than a cold virus. Pharmaceutical
companies and labs worldwide are using it as a tool to help find better
targets for drugs to attack. Venture capitalists are pouring in cash, in the
hope they have discovered a magic bullet for treating diseases from hepatitis
C to cancer to AIDS. New biotech companies are scrambling to develop drugs
based on the technique, and some older ones such as Ribozyme are shifting to
embrace it. "It's revolutionizing science," says Gary Ruvkun, a professor of
genetics at Harvard Medical School...
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