Deze kennis heb ik geleend van Ionis Yahoo conversations (juli 2018). Het geeft een leuk overzicht van de strijd tussen Ionis en Alnylam.
"I am curious as to why Alnylam carries so much higher market cap vs. Ionis. In most cases, market finds out the the fair value far better than any individual oppinion etc. RNA research has a unique yet not uncommon background, scientists had insurmountable barriers that lasted a good couple of decades. Who opened the flood gate? Andrew Fire and Robert Mellow, "In 1998, the American scientists Andrew Fire and Craig Mello published their discovery of a mechanism that can degrade mRNA from a specific gene. This mechanism, RNA interference, is activated when RNA molecules occur as double-stranded pairs in the cell. Double-stranded RNA activates biochemical machinery which degrades those mRNA molecules that carry a genetic code identical to that of the double-stranded RNA. When such mRNA molecules disappear, the corresponding gene is silenced and no protein of the encoded type is made." This scientist, Robert Meller, a 2006 Nobel laureate is with Alnylam along with Phillip Sharp who shared Nobel Prize with Richard Robers for their discovery of RNA splicing in 1993. Sharp is a co-founder of Alnylam. With these two towering figures Alnylam's reputations became beyond dispute. Here I am self conscious that I am revealing private information, when my daughter with education from a top Ivy league school, M.D., Ph.D., had done RNA research herself found out that I had plundered my money into Ionis stock she told me "Dad, a stock to buy is Alnylam, they have better science." I bow down to my daughter in almost all cases but I was putting in my own money, I had to do some due deligence myself. Incidentally, this was 5 years ago, I paid $8.75 for Ionis stock, it kept rising and reached $60 in little over a year, of course I jumped out before the peak, here I made a lot of money. When I did a background check my finding was different. Mellow did his work on worms, here everything worked out fine. RNA is different from ordinary drugs that work outside of the cell membrance but RNA stays inside cells and RNA drugs have to cross the cell membrane to reach cytoplasm and interact with RNAs. Human cell membrane is not same as worm cell membrance, Alnylam has had difficulties to have their durgs cross human cell membraine. This is happening, in part, because double-stranded RNA has polarity issues. Alnylam has been battling this issue from day one and continues to work on this issue to this date. Ionis, on the other hand, had found ways to make chemically modified single-stranded RNA work like double-stranded RNA yet because this one is single-stranded it is far superior in terms of delivery of drugs to cytoplasm. Result is obvious, look at the clinical trial programs at Ionis vs. Alnylam, look at how many Alnylam drugs are in clinical trials for brain diseases, none, Ionis, on the other hand, is going after Huntington's chorea, Amyotraphic Lateral Sclerosis, Alzheimer disease, Spinal Muscular Atrophy and more. My mom used to say "You can't live on prestige", time to wake up and be real."