Is Alnylam Pharmaceuticals a Millionaire Maker?

Perhaps the best-named TV game show ever, in my opinion, is Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The show's title is catchy – and gets people thinking about becoming a millionaire.

However, planning to win on a TV game show isn't the best strategy to build a $1 million nest egg. Investing in stocks provides a path that more people can follow. The main challenge is identifying which stocks to buy.

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) could be one to seriously consider. Is this biotech stock a millionaire maker?

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Coming close so far

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Phillip Sharp co-founded Alnylam with several others in 2002. It wasn't Sharp's first time to launch an innovative biotech company. He was also one of the founders of Biogen (NASDAQ: BIIB) in 1978.

Alnylam was established to focus on a new approach called RNA interference (RNAi). Therapies that use RNAi work by interfering with messenger RNA (mRNA) before it can deliver instructions to cells related to the creation of specific proteins. The discovery of RNAi won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2006.

Two years after its founding, Alnylam conducted an initial public offering (IPO). If you had bought $10,000 of the stock then and never sold a share, your investment would be worth roughly $787,000 today. Alnylmam has come pretty close so far to being a millionaire maker.

Most of the biotech stock's gains have come over the last seven years. Alnylam won U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for RNAi therapy Onpattro in 2018 for the treatment of polyneuropathy of hereditary transthyretin-mediated (hATTR) amyloidosis, a rare genetic disease.

A promising future

Are Alnylam's best days now behind it? Not at all. The company now has another approved ATTR therapy, Amvuttra, which is well on its way to becoming a blockbuster drug. It also has two approved products targeting other rare diseases (Givlaari and Oxlumo). Additionally, Alnylam outlicensed its RNAi therapies, Leqvio, which is approved for treating hypercholesterolemia, to Novartis (NYSE: NVS), and Qfitia, which is approved for treating hemophilia, to Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY).

Alnylam's launch of Amvuttra in treating transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) is only in its early stages. Thanks largely to this new indication, sales of the drug skyrocketed 162% year over year in the third quarter of 2025.

The company has a more powerful ATTR therapy potentially on the way. It's evaluating nucresiran in phase 3 clinical studies targeting ATTR with polyneuropathy and ATTR-CM.

Alnylam's pipeline is also loaded with other late-stage programs. The drugmaker partnered with Regeneron (NASDAQ: REGN) to develop cemdisiran for the treatment of rare diseases, including myasthenia gravis and paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH), as well as geographic atrophy, an advanced form of dry age-related macular degeneration.

It's working with Roche (OTC: RHHBY) on the hypertension drug zilebisiran. Alnylam is also collaborating with Vir Biotechnology (NASDAQ: VIR) to develop a hepatitis D virus drug called elebsirian.

Millionaire-maker?

Is all of this sufficient to enable Alnylam to be a millionaire-maker? Maybe.

To be sure, significant growth expectations are already baked into the share price. Alnylam's forward price-to-earnings multiple is a sky-high 53.5. However, I think the growth generated by Amvuttra alone makes the steep valuation much less scary.

The company's late-stage pipeline also has tremendous potential to produce multiple winners. Granted, Alnylam's outlicensing and collaboration deals mean that it will make less money from some programs than it would have if it entirely owned them. However, these arrangements also reduce the drugmaker's risk.

Probably the most important thing to consider with Alnylam is that it has a platform. RNAi could be used to treat a wide range of diseases in the future, not just the ones the company is currently targeting.

I'm not sure if investing $10,000 or even $100,000 in Alnylam today will make you a millionaire. However, I predict that this biotech stock will continue to generate significant returns for patient investors over the long term.

Keith Speights has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. The Motley Fool recommends Biogen and Roche Holding AG. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.