Sigma-Aldrich and the Universite de Montreal Establish Collaboration for RNA Interference Studies

Sigma-Aldrich announced that it has entered into a collaboration with the Institute of Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) of the Universite de Montreal. This collaboration, made possible through grants from Genome Quebec and contributions by Sigma-Aldrich, will leverage Sigma's RNA Interference (RNAi) technologies for the purpose of identifying potential new drug targets.

Sigma-Aldrich and the Universite de Montreal have signed an agreement whereby the Institute's High Throughput Screening facility gains access to Sigma-Aldrich's RNAi intellectual property portfolio and its MISSION® shRNA library collection for both human and mouse genomes. This agreement marks the latest of a number of licensing and research collaborations the company has made as an ongoing commitment to bring cutting-edge technologies to researchers worldwide.

By adopting the MISSION® shRNA library as their platform for RNAi screening, The University of Montreal will be utilizing the collective expertise of The RNAi Consortium (TRC), which consists of a partnership among the Broad Institute, MIT, Harvard, Dana Farber, Sigma- Aldrich as well as other research organizations and major pharmaceutical companies.

In exchange, Sigma-Aldrich plans to utilize feedback from the collaboration to further its understanding of specific target function and to continue the development of tools for high throughput drug discovery.