Patent ID: 7566700

Claim:
A therapeutically active isolated double-stranded short interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) consisting essentially of a sense strand having a nucleotide sequence length of 18 to 23 nucleotides and an antisense strand having a nucleotide sequence length of 18 to 23 nucleotides said nucleotide sequence of said sense strand has a sequence identity of at least 80% to that of a contiguous nucleotide sequence of length 18 to 23 nucleotides which is contained in the messenger RNA (mRNA) sequence encoded by one of the human, mouse and rat STAT6 nucleotide sequences defined herein respectively as SEQ ID No 10, SEQ ID No 12 and SEQ ID No 14; and said nucleotide sequence of said antisense strand having a sequence complementarity of at least 80% to that of a contiguous nucleotide sequence of length 18 to 23 nucleotides which is contained in one of the RNA sequences encoded by one of the human, mouse and rat STAT6 nucleotide sequences defined herein respectively as SEQ ID No 10, SEQ ID No 12 and SEQ ID No 14, at least one of said sense strand and said antisense strand having a sequence identity of at least 80% to the corresponding strand of SEQ ID No 1, whereby said siRNA has the property of at least repressing expression of STAT6 mRNA and protein in vitro.