The grant, plainly. On August 11, 2020, Dicerna Pharmaceuticals was issued US10738311B2, covering therapeutic inhibition of lactate dehydrogenase using RNA-interference agents. The CPC tags — C12N 15/1137 (gene-expression regulation) and the C12N 2310 oligonucleotide-modification series — place it in the silencing-therapeutic stack, aimed at a specific metabolic target.
Why a financing desk reads patents: a development-stage RNAi company has no product revenue, so its valuation rests on cash, burn, and the strength of its IP estate. When such a company raises — a secondary, a PIPE, a collaboration with an upfront — the issued grants are the assets investors are effectively buying exposure to. Dilution math, plainly, is the cost of extending runway against that IP.
The cautionary frame: issued IP supports a raise, but it does not pay the bills. A single target-specific grant is one line in an estate; runway is still cash divided by burn. For holders, the question is whether a financing buys enough quarters to convert the IP into clinical value before the next dilution event.
What the grant does not tell you: the company's cash position, its quarterly burn, or its share count. Those come from the 10-Q, not the patent. The grant tells you the asset exists and what it covers; the filing tells you how long the company can fund the work around it.
The takeaway for a capital-markets reader: treat issued platform and target grants as the collateral behind a development-stage raise, then do the runway math separately. Dicerna's August 2020 LDH-silencing grant is a concrete, dated example of the IP that such a financing story rests on.