Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc., having been incubated within Polaris Venture Partners, has raised $17 million in Series A and Series B financing since the second quarter, money that will be directed at its RNA interference research.

Founded earlier this year, Alnylam, of Cambridge, Mass., is focused on finding therapeutics for cancer, infectious diseases, inflammation and other disorders. It disclosed its $15 million Series B round last week as well as the $2 million Series A.

Waltham, Mass.-based Polaris General Partner Christoph Westphal is serving as start-up CEO of the company, in addition to vice chairman and founder. "I'm looking to replace myself within six months," he told BioWorld Today.

"The scientific founders are the core discoverers of the mechanism of RNA interference in mammalian cells," Westphal said. "We're going to use that insight into the structure of active RNA interference to develop drugs.

"We have a pretty clear picture of the structure of the drugs," Westphal said, noting that is very unusual in a company at Alnylam's stage of development.

The goal is to develop nucleic acid-based drugs that target messenger RNA and inhibit the production of disease-causing proteins, the company said. And Alnylam is developing technology that can silence those genes by degrading the viral genetic message before it can produce one of those proteins. Alnylam said it can do that without interfering with the gene itself.

At this point, the company is already in preclinical studies with animal models.

"We're going to look to advance on several therapeutic fronts and take those products all the way through late preclinical studies and into man," Westphal said. "The next fund raising will probably coincide with going into man."

Westphal is in lofty company with Alnylam's scientific founders, who include Phillip Sharp, a Nobel laureate and founder of Biogen Inc., of Cambridge, Mass.; Paul Schimmel, member of the National Academy of Sciences and founder of Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Lexington, Mass., and Alkermes Inc., of Cambridge, Mass.; Dave Bartel, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Tom Tuschl, of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Guttingen, Germany; and Phil Zamore, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

A co-founder was John Clarke, managing general partner at Cardinal Partners, of Princeton, N.J. Clarke also serves as chairman. Peter Barrett, senior principal at Atlas Venture, of Boston, is a board member, and Bob Nelsen, managing director at ARCH Venture Partners, of Chicago, joined the board as an observer.

The scientific founders are all exclusive part-time consultants to the company, Westphal said.

"They have all committed a significant amount of time to the company," he said.

Sharp and Schimmel are industry advisers to Polaris.

Westphal said the money should take Alnylam more than three years into the future.

He also said that the company has been approached by several companies that are interested in partnering, and Westphal thinks Alnylam will have at least one partner by the time it enters human trials.