This research license provides Pfizer with freedom to use ddRNAi in undertaking research activities throughout its global operations. Financial details were not disclosed.

Shaf Yousaf, President of the Sigma-Aldrich Research Biotechnology business unit, said, "ddRNAi has important research applications and future potential for therapeutic development. Following our research collaboration with The RNAi Consortium licenses to key RNAi intellectual property, Sigma- Aldrich has an intellectual property portfolio in RNAi that positions us well for a comprehensive out-licensing program as well as market leadership in RNAi research reagents."

The use of ddRNAi to develop therapeutics is recognized as having a number of critical advantages available over alternative RNAi and other gene silencing technologies. These include the wide range of technologies to deliver the ddRNAi molecules into the target cell; the critical ability to simultaneously disable multiple genes in order to attack mutating viral diseases and cancers; the ability to silence genes in whole organisms; and the ability to control the expression and timing of gene silencing, particularly important to the development of drugs for the pharmaceutical industry.

Sigma-Aldrich is the worldwide exclusive licensee in the human field of ddRNAi technology, excluding the development of ddRNAi as a human therapeutic, of patents owned or co-owned by Benitec and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) of Australia. With CSIRO, Benitec holds the only issued patents in the U.S. and UK covering RNAi in mammalian cells, currently seven issued patents in five jurisdictions, including the U.S., UK and Australia. Another 65 other RNAi-based patent applications are in advanced stages of prosecution in 14 other jurisdictions.

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The researchers also looked at men lacking daughters. For example, in men with exactly two offspring, those with no daughters had an 11% increase in the incidence of prostate cancer, and those with no sons had a 47% increase, compared with men who had one son and one daughter. "The increased risk of prostate cancer in men with no daughters is probably due to chance," says Dr. Harlap, "but it might indicate a problem with a gene on the X-chromosome."

In addition to the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, the international team of scientists included researchers from Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and the Braun School of Public Health, Jerusalem, Israel.

The Jerusalem Perinatal Cohort is among those being followed by the life course studies program within the Mailman School's Department of Epidemiology. Department Chair Ezra Susser, MD, DrPH, has been building a program of life course research -- called the Imprints Center -- in which epidemiologists seek to uncover the causes of a broad range of disease and health outcomes, by following individuals from an early point in life and examining their risks for disease. Life course studies are particularly well positioned to examine the interplay of genetic and environmental risk factors - the key to understanding many complex diseases.

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