Life Sciences, funding, Startup

Sorrento Therapeutics Raises $2.3 Million

Bruce V. Bigelow 6/19/09

San Diego-based Sorrento Therapeutics has raised $2.3 million in a one-time equity investment, according to a filing yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The biotech, which specializes in new methods for developing 100-percent human monoclonal antibodies, was founded in 2006 and lists Steve Zaniboni, Antonius Schuh, and Henry Ji as executives and directors.

Zaniboni was named in February as the chief financial officer at Xifin, which provides Software as a Service to support laboratory billings and financial management operations. He previously worked as CFO at San Diego’s AviaraDx, Arcturus Bioscience, and Sequenom, and held financial management positions at several life science companies in the Boston area.

The filing did not identify Sorrento’s investor. But Miami-based OpkoHealth said earlier this month it had made an investment in Sorrento Therapeutics in exchange for a one-third stake in the San Diego biotech. Opko says it also received an exclusive license to the Sorrento antibody library for the discovery and development of therapeutic antibodies in the field of ophthalmology.

Ji is named on several recent patents relating to new ways for amplifying and cloning a specific region or sequences of immunological genes to generate antibody libraries.

Bruce V. Bigelow is the editor of Xconomy San Diego. You can e-mail him at bbigelow@xconomy.com or call 858-202-0492