Health History | Alnylam — RNAi Named for a Belt Star, Written in Cambridge in June

People treat Alnylam as the Kendall Square campus at 675 West Kendall Street that always sold an RNAi injection from a Nasdaq-100 listing.

The first book was a Delaware corporation written to silence a gene.

On 14 June 2002 the company incorporated around work from Phillip Sharp, Paul Schimmel, David Bartel, Thomas Tuschl, and Phillip Zamore.

Investors Christoph Westphal and John Kennedy Clarke backed the formation.

John Maraganore was the founding chief executive.

The name comes from Alnilam, the middle star in Orion's belt, respelt so the mark would clear.

A 2003 merger with Germany's Ribopharma AG and 24.6 million dollars of private equity put a European lab on the same book.

The IPO filed on 27 February 2004 and raised 26 million dollars.

Shares began trading as ALNY that May.

The first approved RNAi medicine reached patients in 2018.

Headquarters and research remain in Cambridge.

A large-scale plant later opened in Norton, Massachusetts.

The science started as a Max Planck and academic method, not a Kendall loading dock.

Photo: Kendall Square and the First Street research blocks, via Wikimedia Commons.