Boehringer Ingelheim and Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a Watertown, Massachusetts-headquartered biotechnology company, have signed a research collaboration and license agreement to discover and develop GalXC RNAi therapeutics for treating chronic liver diseases.

The partnership will initially focus on nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a chronic liver disease.

Dicerna’s GalXC technology platform uses RNAi to inhibit the expression of disease-causing genes by destroying the messenger RNAs of those genes.

Source: Boehringer Ingelheim