Alnylam Added to Russell 3000 and Russell 2000 Indexes.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today that it was added to the Russell 3000 and Russell 2000 Indexes effective at the close of the U.S. markets on June 30, 2006.

"We are proud to be selected to join the Russell 3000 and Russell 2000 Indexes," said John Maraganore, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. "We believe that our inclusion in these indexes reflects the growing interest by the investment community in the potential of RNAi for therapeutic applications, and the promise of this technology to create innovative medicines to treat human disease in a fundamentally new way."

The Russell family of U.S. indexes is designed to be a comprehensive representation of the investable U.S. equity market. These indexes are value-weighted and include only common stocks belonging to corporations incorporated in the U.S. and its territories. The Russell 3000 Index measures the performance of the 3,000 largest U.S. companies based on total market capitalization, which represents approximately 98% of the investable U.S. equity market. The Russell 2000 includes the smallest 2000 securities in the Russell 3000 and offers investors access to the small-cap segment of the U.S. equity universe. The Russell 2000 is constructed to provide a comprehensive and unbiased small-cap barometer and is completely reconstituted annually to ensure larger stocks do not distort the performance and characteristics of the true small-cap opportunity set.

About Alnylam

Alnylam is a biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics based on RNA interference, or RNAi. The company is applying its therapeutic expertise in RNAi to address significant medical needs, many of which cannot effectively be addressed with small molecules or antibodies, the current major classes of drugs. Alnylam is building a pipeline of RNAi therapeutics; its lead program is in Phase 1 human clinical trials for the treatment of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection, which is the leading cause of hospitalization in infants in the U.S. The company's leadership position in fundamental patents, technology, and know-how relating to RNAi has enabled it to form major alliances with leading companies including Merck, Medtronic, and Novartis. The company, founded in 2002, maintains global headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has an additional operating unit in Kulmbach, Germany. Alnylam is honored to be the "emerging/mid-cap" company recipient of the 2006 James D. Watson Helix Award, the biotechnology industry's award for outstanding achievement. For more information, visit www.alnylam.com.

Alnylam Forward-Looking Statements

Various statements in this release concerning our future expectations, plans and prospects, including with respect to the development of RNAi therapeutics, constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including risks related to: our approach to discover and develop novel drugs, which is unproven and may never lead to marketable products; obtaining, maintaining and protecting intellectual property utilized by our products; our ability to enforce our patents against infringers and to defend our patent portfolio against challenges from third parties; our ability to obtain additional funding to support our business activities; our dependence on third parties for development, manufacture, marketing, sales, and distribution of products; the successful development of our product candidates, all of which are in early stages of development; obtaining regulatory approval for products; competition from others using technology similar to ours and others developing products for similar uses; our dependence on collaborators; and our short operating history; as well as those risks more fully discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our most recent report on Form 10-Q on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.