When Merck & Co. Inc. acquired small biotech company Sirna Therapeutics for $1.1 billion in cash last October, it purchased a patent portfolio that could dominate the marketplace for dozens of new drugs, treating everything from cancer to unwanted hair growth. Building that portfolio was the culmination of five years of hard work for scientist-turned-patent-lawyer Bharat Chowrira. As Sirna’s senior vice president of legal affairs and chief patent counsel, Chowrira spearheaded patent strategy. He even helped CEO Howard Robin pull the 90-employee company back from the edge after the biotech crash of 2001, when the company’s market capitalization plummeted from $750 million to $3 million in a single year.

Sirna holds key patents on RNA interference (RNAi), a new technology that won its inventors from Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts the Nobel Prize less than a month before Merck’s buyout. RNAi is a biological process that can block the expression of particular genes. Viral diseases, like hepatitis and the flu, are linked to the abnormal expression of certain genes, so drugs based on RNAi technology have great potential. Sirna is still years from releasing its first drug, and it isn’t alone in the RNAi space. But Chowrira says the company’s patent portfolio covers any RNAibased drugs that its competitors might make.

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