Academic Collaborations

Silence has initiated several collaborations with different Institutes at the Charité of Berlin, including major collaborations with Prof. Bertram Wiedenmann and Prof. Norbert Suttorp.

The collaboration with Prof. Bertram Wiedenmann, who is the Chair of Hepatology and Gastroenterology & Interdisciplinary Centre of Metabolism at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, is focused on in vivo studies in pancreatic and other gastrointestinal cancers.

The collaboration with Prof. Norbert Suttorp, who is the Director of the Institute of Internal Medicine, Dept. Infektious Diseases at the Free University of Berlin, has two key components (a) the improvement of functional RNAi efficacy in the lung following inhalative and/or systemic application of siRNA and siRNA-lipoplexes, respectively and (b) the proof of therapeutic RNAi efficacy in different clinically relevant lung disease models.

The Charité was founded in 1710 and belongs to the oldest hospitals in Germany. Today, the Charité is Europe's largest University hospital. Annually the Charité has more than 120,000 in-patients and approximately a million out-patients.

The collaboration with Prof. H. Oya Alpar of the Centre for Drug Delivery Research, School of Pharmacy, University of London, is focused on proof of concept studies to investigate the tissue distribution of siRNA following respiratory applications.

The School of Pharmacy, founded in 1842, is the only free-standing specialist teaching and research institution dedicated to pharmacy and the pharmaceutical sciences in the UK. Many of its internationally renowned academics and researchers are leading experts in their field of study.