Santaris Pharma Consortium Receives $9.33M to Develop RNA Drug Compounds

Santaris Pharma received a DKK 45 million grant, or $9.33 million, to develop a high-throughput drug discovery platform for novel RNA medicines from the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation (ATF). The focus of the three-year program will be on identifying three to five new RNA drug candidates.

Santaris Pharma will leverage its LNA drug chemistry for the project, while the screening platform will be developed by a collaborative research consortium led by Santaris Pharma and the Biotech Research & Innovation Centre (BRIC) at the University of Copenhagen. The Consortium also includes the Nucleic Acid Centre, University of Southern Denmark, H. Lundbeck, and RiboTask. 

In 2006 and 2007, the ATF made two separate project grants to Santaris Pharma and the University of Copenhagen totaling approximately $4.14 million to support research in miRNA therapeutics.