Alnylam Elects Marsha Fanucci to its Board of Directors

Alnylam Elects Marsha Fanucci to its Board of Directors


Appointment of Industry Leader Brings Broad Strategic and Financial Experience to Board -

 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 9, 2010 - Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today the election of Marsha H. Fanucci to its Board of Directors. Ms. Fanucci is the former Chief Financial Officer of Millennium Pharmaceuticals. She currently serves on the Board of Directors at Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

"We are very pleased to have Marsha join the Alnylam Board. Marsha is widely recognized as a leader across multiple strategic dimensions of building an innovation-based biotechnology company, and she will bring this expertise to our Board as we continue to advance our novel medicines to patients," said John Maraganore, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Alnylam.

"Alnylam is one of the leading innovation-based biotechnology companies, and a pioneer in advancing an entirely new class of high impact medicines with RNAi therapeutics," said Ms. Fanucci. "I am excited to be part of this important endeavor, and look forward to working with the Alnylam team."

Ms. Fanucci served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. from 2004 through 2009, where she was responsible for corporate strategy, treasury, financial planning and reporting, and operations. During her tenure there, she had an active role in building the company as a profitable industry leader that was subsequently acquired by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company for $8.8 billion. While at Millennium, she also served as Vice President, Finance and Corporate Strategy. Prior to joining Millennium, she was Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy at Genzyme Corporation from 1998 to 2000. From 1987 to 1998, Ms. Fanucci was employed at Arthur D. Little, Inc., as a pharmaceutical industry consultant.

About RNA Interference (RNAi)

RNAi (RNA interference) is a revolution in biology, representing a breakthrough in understanding how genes are turned on and off in cells, and a completely new approach to drug discovery and development. Its discovery has been heralded as "a major scientific breakthrough that happens once every decade or so," and represents one of the most promising and rapidly advancing frontiers in biology and drug discovery today which was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. RNAi is a natural process of gene silencing that occurs in organisms ranging from plants to mammals. By harnessing the natural biological process of RNAi occurring in our cells, the creation of a major new class of medicines, known as RNAi therapeutics, is on the horizon. Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), the molecules that mediate RNAi and comprise Alnylam's RNAi therapeutic platform, target the cause of diseases by potently silencing specific mRNAs, thereby preventing disease-causing proteins from being made. RNAi therapeutics have the potential to treat disease and help patients in a fundamentally new way.

About Alnylam Pharmaceuticals

Alnylam is a biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics based on RNA interference, or RNAi. The company is applying its therapeutic expertise in RNAi to address significant medical needs, many of which cannot effectively be addressed with small molecules or antibodies, the current major classes of drugs. Alnylam is leading the translation of RNAi as a new class of innovative medicines with peer-reviewed research efforts published in the world's top scientific journals including Nature, Nature Medicine, and Cell. The company is leveraging these capabilities to build a broad pipeline of RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of a wide range of disease areas, including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), liver cancers, TTR-mediated amyloidosis (ATTR), hypercholesterolemia, and Huntington's disease. In addition, Alnylam formed Alnylam Biotherapeutics, a division of the company focused on the development of RNAi technologies for application in manufacturing processes for biotherapeutic products, including recombinant proteins and monoclonal antibodies. The company's leadership position in fundamental patents, technology, and know-how relating to RNAi has enabled it to form major alliances with leading companies including Medtronic, Novartis, Biogen Idec, Roche, Takeda, Kyowa Hakko Kirin, and Cubist. Alnylam and Isis are majority owners of Regulus Therapeutics Inc., a company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of microRNA therapeutics. Founded in 2002, Alnylam maintains headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, please visit www.alnylam.com.

Alnylam Forward-Looking Statement

Various statements in this release concerning Alnylam's future expectations, plans and prospects, constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, as well as those risks more fully discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of its most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent Alnylam's views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing its views as of any subsequent date. Alnylam does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

 

 

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