Merck & Co Inc has entered into a collaboration with the Cambridge, US biotech company Orna Therapeutics Inc to discover new therapeutics using engineered RNA molecules. Simultaneously, Orna has raised $221 million in a Series B financing round to accelerate development of its technology platform which includes a proprietary lipid nanoparticle delivery system. Orna calls its engineered RNA molecules circular RNA therapeutics (oRNA) because they have been transformed from a linear format into a circular format.
