Recent posts and comments

• A Contract Services Cluster Emerges, the Burnham Gets a Big Donation, Somaxon Resubmits Sleep Drug Application, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

  San Diego’s life sciences sector had a busy week. Allow me to recap it for you.

  —Working with Assay Depot, a San Diego-based online marketplace for CRO services, Bruce found 144 companies in... Read more »

• San Diego’s Halozyme Injects New Life into Old Drugs

  Smart companies are cautious about fiddling with successful products. So I was intrigued to learn that Roche was reformulating its blockbuster breast cancer drug trastuzumab to include an enzyme from San Diego-based... Read more »

• Somaxon Revises FDA Application

  San Diego-based Somaxon said it submitted a revised application for its experimental sleeping pill doxepin (Silenor) to the FDA today, with a decision expected by March 21. The revised application addressed the agency’s... Read more »

• A Baldness Update from Histogen; Sequenom Agrees to Settle a Suit; the Life Sciences Job Outlook Improves & More San Diego Life Sciences News

  There were new developments over the past week in some big ongoing stories.

  —Histogen CEO Gail Naughton told Bruce the San Diego-based biotech expects to report results from a one-year follow-up of... Read more »

• Roche Prepares to Make Devices for Drug Using Halozyme Therapeutics Technology

  San Diego-based Halozyme Therapeutics (NASDAQ: HALO) received some good news today. Its partner Roche announced plans to invest $182 million in two European factories that will produce a device designed to... Read more »

• San Diego Biotechs Seem Poised to Start Hiring, But Chemists Will Face a Tough Time

  Indications are that employment in San Diego’s life sciences industry appears to be stabilizing, good news after a tumultuous year in which hundreds of experienced scientists and business professionals lost their jobs.

  Recruiter... Read more »

• New Machine From San Diego’s Illumina Intensifies Race for Faster, Cheaper Genome Decoder

  The cost of sequencing a person’s genome continues to fall. Illumina this week introduced a machine that can sequence an individual’s genome for under $10,000. That is one percent of the $1 million... Read more »

• VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Raises More Funds, Genzyme Declares a Truce, Adventrx Charts Comeback, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

  A flurry of financing deals made it a good week for San Diego’s life sciences industry. Get the highlights here.

  —VentiRx Pharmaceuticals, which is working on drugs for allergies and cancer,... Read more »

• Scandal, Swine Flu, Shareholder Disputes, and More: 2009 Was Quite a Year for San Diego’s Life Sciences Industry

  Covering the life sciences in San Diego is never dull, and the news flow last year provided plenty of drama. What follows are some highlights from the past year:

  — Embattled tools... Read more »

• Cool Device from San Diego’s BeneChill May Improve Odds for Cardiac Arrest Victims

  Research over the last several years has shown that lowering the temperatures of unconscious cardiac arrest patients improves their odds of survival without brain damage. This intervention commonly begins in the... Read more »

• San Diego’s Anvita Health Seeks to Prevent Medical Errors

  [Corrected 12/10/09, 1:05 am to show Anvita does not store or manage EMRs.] Ahmed F. Ghouri was frustrated. Too often, the anesthesiologist had seen seemingly preventable prescribing errors that... Read more »

• Tools Company Nexus Biosystems Acquires Aurora Biotechnologies

  Nexus Biosystems, a life sciences tools company located 20 miles north of San Diego in Poway, says it’s acquiring another tools company in the area, Aurora Biotechnologies. The price wasn’t disclosed.

  Both privately... Read more »

• A Sapphire Energy Co-Founder Sees Solutions in Algae for Drugs as Well as Biofuels

  The potential of algae as a clean energy source has been generating a lot of entrepreneurial excitement in San Diego. At last count, 10 local companies are busy working on technologies focused on... Read more »

• Isis Extends Timeline on Cholesterol-Lowering Drug, FDA Delays Review of Cadence Pain Reliever, Fate Therapeutics Raises $30 Million, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

  Drug development programs got extended at two San Diego life sciences companies, while others had some good news on the fund-raising front. We wrap it all up for you here.

  —Fate ... Read more »

• Biotech Meets Cleantech: GenVault Aims to Deep Six the Laboratory Deep Freeze

  GenVault wants to bring biological samples in from the cold. For decades, the biological samples used to diagnose or study disease have been stored in freezers, which use a lot of electricity.... Read more »

• Trius Therapeutics Reveals Plans for IPO, SpectraScience Raises $4.3M, Sequenom Tightens its Belt, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

  Some San Diego life sciences companies reported a burst of new financing, while embattled Sequenom told investors it’s trying to conserve its available cash. Here’s our rundown of the latest highlights:

  —San Diego’s... Read more »

• Sequenom Looks to Prolong Operations as Available Cash Runs Low

  San Diego’s embattled Sequenom, which halted the debut of a new diagnostic product over mishandled data, is now considering steps to conserve cash. In an SEC document filed Monday, the life sciences... Read more »

• Student Dissertation Launches San Diego Life Sciences Tools Company, Sirigen

  The work leading to Brent Gaylord’s dissertation on using light-emitting polymers to detect bits of DNA was more far more than an academic exercise. His initial paper, and the intellectual... Read more »

• Novocell Gets $20 Million Award

  San Diego’s Novocell has received a disease team award totaling $20 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to fund work on its cell therapy for type 2 diabetes. The team... Read more »

• New York Biotech Sues Sequenom for Fraud

  Xenomics, a New York-based developer of molecular diagnostic technologies, says it has filed a suit in New York state court alleging that San Diego’s Sequenom fraudulently misrepresented the status of its prenatal... Read more »