Drugmaker Merck & Co. said Friday it has completed its $1.1 billion acquisition of Sirna Therapeutics Inc., a small biotech company with a promising technology that won this year's Nobel Prize for medicine.

Sirna is among several biotech companies developing drugs that silence genes by speeding up destruction of the messenger-carrying RNA transcribed from individual genes. That could be particularly useful in developing cancer drugs.

Merck has said the technology represents a fundamental shift in how drugs are developed that could expand the number of potential targets for drugs and make them longer-lasting and more potent.

Acquiring Sirna also complements RNA-related technology Merck got with its 2001 acquisition of Rosetta Inpharmatics, Merck has said.

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