Two Nobel Prize winners, Phillip Sharp and Craig Mello, have formed companies competing for the same goal: to be the first to use a newly discovered gene-blocking technology to develop new drugs against untreatable disease such as HIV and cancer. While Mello won the Nobel Prize for discovering RNA interference, the genetic phenomenon that makes the gene-blocking technique possible, Sharp’s company has grabbed most of the patents in the area. Big drugmakers such as Merck, Roche, and Novartis have thrown their support behind Sharp’s company, called Alnylam.
