Gene-silencing drug approved

The approval, announced by the US Food and Drug Administration on 10 August, is a landmark for a field that has struggled for nearly two decades to prove its worth in the clinic. Four years later, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to two RNAi pioneers: Alnylam experimented with a number of delivery routes and target organs, encasing some of its RNA molecules in fatty nanoparticles or chemically modifying the RNAs to help them survive the perilous journey through the bloodstream.