06/15/11

Genomatica Looking to Raise $150M

Claiming another milestone on its path to commercialization, San Diego-based Genomatica says it has successfully used a 13,000-liter fermentation tank in Decatur, IL, to produce what it calls a “demonstration-scale” batch of 1,4-Butanediol (BDO), which was previously synthesized through industrial chemical processes. Genomatica said it produced the “Bio-BDO” with partner Tate & Lyle and expects to be in commercial production in late 2012. The real news, however, came Monday when CEO Christophe Schilling told Reuters that Genomatica plans to raise as much as $150 million, possibly through an initial public offering.

06/14/11

Pacira Pain Drug Faces FDA Delay

The FDA has delayed its decision on Parsippany, NJ-based Pacira Pharmaceuticals’ drug—a long-acting version of the pain drug bupivacaine called Exparel—according to a press release. Pacira, which also has operations in San Diego, went public in February, and investors pushed the company’s stock up more than 47 percent in anticipation of a July decision from the FDA. Pacira is now expecting a ruling by October 28. The company’s shares fell 14 percent to $11.30 in pre-market trading.

06/13/11

Somaxon Raises $5M

San Diego’s Somaxon Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SOMX), said today it completed a private placement of nearly 2.2 million shares of its common stock to Paladin Labs, raising a total of $5 million. The company said the deal was part of its collaboration with Paladin, which has exclusive rights to commercialize Somaxon’s doxepin (Silenor) in Canada, South America, and Africa.

Vertex Adds New HepC Drugs for $60M

Cambridge, MA-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX) said today it has agreed to pay $60 million upfront, as much as $715 million in development milestone payments over time, and potentially $750 million in sales milestones, to obtain a worldwide license to a couple new hepatitis C drug candidates from South San Francisco-based Alios Biopharma. The two drugs are nucleoside analogues which Vertex hopes to put into a hepatitis C cocktail regimen that is entirely oral, and would eliminate the standard interferon that causes flu-like symptoms. Vertex won FDA clearance last month for its pioneering new protease inhibitor, telaprevir (Incivek), which raises cure rates to almost 80 percent for hepatitis C patients, but which must be given in tandem with standard interferon.

06/09/11

Access Scientific Raises $10M

San Diego-based Access Scientific says it has completed a $10 million round of financing led by CAC, a San Diego private equity firm, and the company’s existing institutional investors. In a statement today, Access Scientific says the funds will be used to hire a direct sales and clinical team to help commercialize its product, a wand-like device intended to simplify the process of inserting an intravenous catheter in a patient for an extended period of time. One uncertainty about the company’s announcement is whether all $10 million is new money. Access Scientific raised at least $4.6 million last year, according to regulatory filings, but a spokeswoman for the company was not immediately available to clarify.

06/08/11

Halozyme Licensing Deal Valued at $63M

San Diego’s Halozyme Therapeutics (NASDAQ: HALO) and Foster City, CA-based Intrexon have agreed to use Halozyme’s recombinant human hyaluronidase to develop an injectable formulation of an Intrexon drug for treating alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, a genetic disorder that damages the lungs and liver. Under the exclusive worldwide licensing agreement announced yesterday, Intrexon will make a $9 million upfront payment to Halozyme, and as much as $54 million in additional milestone payments. Halozyme also will get royalties on the drug worth up to 11 percent of sales.

06/06/11

Tioga Drug Gets Fast Track Status

San Diego’s Tioga Pharmaceuticals, a virtual biotech with the equivalent of three full-time employees, said the FDA has granted “fast track” designation to asimadoline, a compound Tioga is investigating for treating patients with diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome. Tioga is in a late-stage clinical trial of the drug, which is being conducted under a special protocol assessment agreement with the FDA.

06/02/11

Sapphire Energy Executive Killed in Crash

The corporate controller at San Diego’s Sapphire Energy was killed earlier this week when an out-of-control sport-utility vehicle swerved into a bike path while he was bicycling home from work. A close friend told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Poway, CA-resident Nick Venuto, 40, was an avid bicyclist and married father of two. Venuto was pedaling home from work on a bike path along State Route 56 Tuesday evening when he was struck by a Ford Escape driven by 27-year-old Sheena Saranita after she lost control of her vehicle. Another bicylist, Baron Herdelin-Doherty also was hit, and was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in critical condition.

06/01/11

USD Names Lawyer Stephen Ferruolo as Law School Dean

The University of San Diego today named San Diego lawyer (and Xconomist) Stephen Ferruolo as dean of its law school. Ferrulo has served as chairman of the San Diego office of the Goodwin Procter law firm since 2007, when the international firm set up shop here, and was a partner in the firm’s business law group and a member of its technology and life sciences practice as well as its corporate governance and mergers & acquisitions practice. Before graduating with honors from Stanford Law School in 1990, Ferruolo was an assistant professor of history at Stanford. He also was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, earned his Ph.D. in History at Princeton University, and served on the faculty at Bennington College. He assumes his new duties at the private Catholic university’s law school on Aug. 1.

05/26/11

Amylin Gets TRO Against Lilly

A San Diego federal court granted a temporary restraining order sought by San Diego diabetes drug developer Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMLN) against Eli Lilly. Amylin sued Lilly a few week ago for violating their joint marketing agreement for exenatide. The court ordered Lilly to halt its plans to use the same sales force to sell both Amylin’s exenatide and linagliptin, a rival diabetes drug from Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim. The order also prohibits Lilly from disclosing any confidential information about exenatide to any of its sales representatives or employees who are marketing linagliptin.

05/25/11

Active Network Shares Begin Trading

Shares of the Active Network, the San Diego-based provider of online registration services for conferences, recreational licenses, sporting leagues and other events, gained more than a dollar in morning trading today, after the company priced its IPO yesterday at $15 a share. That was below the expected range of $16 to $18 a share, which suggests the Internet company wasn’t attracting the sort of enthusiasm that investors had earlier this week for the debut of Yandex, the Russian search engine, and recently for LinkedIn, which provides online business networking services. Still, it was a good start as the Active Network’s stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “ACTV.”

05/23/11

Accelrys Buys Sweden’s Contur

San Diego-based Accelrys (NASDAQ: ACCL), which outlined its scientific Software-as-a-Service strategy for me just a couple months ago, says it has acquired privately-held Contur Software AB of Stockholm, Sweden, in a deal valued at $13.1 million. Accelrys says Contur provides Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) software that enables scientific organizations to document their R&D. and to capture their intellectual property (IP). Contur, which offers its R&D documentation on a Software-as-a-Service model, says it has been especially popular among researchers in the food and beverage, chemical, and biotechnology industries, as well as academia. An Accelrys spokeswoman says the $13.1 million deal includes $500,000 to be paid upon reaching certain milestones.

Qualcomm Identifies First GPS+Glonass Smartphone

Qualcomm chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs said earlier this month the San Diego wireless giant has developed technology that enables smartphones to use either GPS or Russia’s Glonass satellite location capabilities. Today, Qualcomm says the first GPS+Glonass-capable phone is the MTS 945, available from Russian mobile operator and retailer MTS. It’s an Android-based phone made by China’s ZTE with Qualcomm’s MSM7x30 chipset. While the smartphone offers the benefit of using as many as 55 satellites to calculate global position for navigation or location-based apps just about anywhere in the world, the MTS 945 appears to be targeting Russia’s mid-market users.

05/19/11

Polaris Expands Ludwig Collaboration

The San Diego-based Polaris Group has agreed to expand its collaboration with the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research on their work together in developing pegylated arginine deiminase (ADI-PEG 20), a promising anti-cancer compound. We recently profiled the company here. Under their expanded collaboration, Polaris and the institute hope to identify other enzymes with potential anti-tumor activity and to further explore ADI-PEG 20 as a cancer therapy. The collaboration builds on the work of Lloyd Old, the Ludwig Institute’s New York branch director and a longtime cancer researcher at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

AutoGenomics Withdraws IPO

In a letter to federal regulators yesterday, Carlsbad, CA-based AutoGenomics withdrew its filing for an initial public offering, which the company submitted in July, 2008. The company said at that time that its IPO would be made only by means of a prospectus, with J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. acting as the sole book-running manager of the offering. CEO Fareed Kureshy gave no reason for withdrawing, but said it “may undertake a subsequent private offering.” AutoGenomics, which makes molecular diagnostic machines, has not made a profit since it was founded in 1999. VentureWire, which reported the withdrawal, said the company had an accumulated deficit of nearly $68 million at the end of March 2010.

05/17/11

Shire Buys Advanced BioHealing for $750 Million

Irish drug giant Shire (NASDAQ: SHPGY) is making a big push into regenerative medicine by shelling out $750 million in cash for Advanced BioHealing, according to a press release. Advanced BioHealing–which is based in Westport, CT, and has manufacturing and lab space in La Jolla, CA—makes Duragraft, a bio-engineered skin substitute used to treat diabetic foot ulcers. The product brought in $146 million in sales last year. Shire said in the statement that Advanced BioHealing “compliments Shire’s existing specialty focus and biologics manufacturing capability.” The deal comes just one week after Shire CEO Angus Russell told journalists in New York (including Xconomy) that the company is looking to boost its capabilities in regenerative medicine.

05/11/11

Sapphire Getting Gas from Linde

San Diego algae biofuels developer Sapphire Energy said today it has signed a multi-year agreement with the Linde Group of Munich, Germany, to co-develop a low-cost system for supplying carbon dioxide to commercial-scale, open-pond, algae-to-fuel cultivation systems. Linde, the leading commercial supplier of carbon dioxide in the United States, agreed to deliver carbon dioxide to Sapphire’s commercial demonstration facility near Columbus, NM, and to work with Sapphire to reduce the costs associated with re-purposing manmade carbon dioxide for commercial-scale open pond algae cultivation.

Proximetry Names Chief Strategist

San Diego-based Proximetry, which I profiled last summer, today named Andres Carvello as executive vice president and chief strategy officer. In its statement today, Proximetry says Carvello was previously the chief information officer at Austin Energy and chief architect of the first fully deployed smart grid in the United States. He will be responsible for setting Proximetry’s technology strategy in electricity, oil and gas markets, public safety, telecommunications, and transportation industries.

Nukona, Integer Wireless Offer Wireless Health Security

San Diego-based Nukona, a startup developing security management software for mobile devices, has formed a partnership with Integer Wireless, a Newport Beach, CA, engineering firm that provides HIPAA-compliant wireless networks for hospitals, physician groups, and other healthcare providers. Under a partnership announced this week at the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance’s annual Convergence Summit in San Diego, Integer Wireless will include Nukona’s mobile device applications management platform in its healthcare-related offerings for voice, data, and video communications.

Smart Grid Startups Unveil Partnership

San Diego’s On-Ramp Wireless says it has formed a partnership with Sacramento, CA-based GridSense that will combine On-Ramp’s low-power wireless networking technology with GridSense’s TransformerIQ technology. In a statement today, the companies say that combining their technologies will enable electric utilities to monitor their distribution networks at a lower cost, improve outage restoration, and improve demand-side load management.