Lentigen and Dharmacon, a unit of Fisher Biosciences, entered into a multiyear collaboration to develop and manufacture lentiviral expression reagents to deliver short hairpin RNA (shRNA) expression vectors into cells using RNA interference (RNAi) mediated gene silencing.

“Chemically synthesized RNAi provides short-term gene silencing, but when we need long-term gene suppression, lentiviral technology is very handy as lentiviral sequences get stably integrated into the genome of the host cell,” William Marshall, Ph.D.,vp, technology and business development at Fisher, says.

“The collaboration will utilize Dharmacon’s expertise in designing potent and specific gene-silencing reagents combined with Lentigen’s high-titer LentiMax™ vector system to develop the new lentiviral particles,” adds Dr. Marshall. Under the terms of the agreement, resulting products will be commercialized by Dharmacon and manufactured by Lentigen.

Boro Dropulic, CEO and founder of Lentigen, notes that the collaboration expects to market Lentiviral vectors for RNAi research in the spring of 2007.

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