Between the formation of the new $100 million West Health Investment Fund and the new wet-lab space Johnson & Johnson is hosting for as many as 20 startups, you’d have to say it’s been a good week for life sciences innovation in San Diego. Get briefed here or get left behind.

—San Diego’s Gary and Mary West, who provided $90 million to establish the West Wireless Health Institute, established the $100 million West Health Investment Fund to invest solely in startups that promise to drive down the cost of health care. Don Casey, the fund manager and West Wireless CEO, vowed that the fund would not cause a “balloon squeeze,” where innovation moves the cost from one part of the health system to another.

—Johnson & Johnson has refurbished part of its Pharmaceutical Research & Development facility in San Diego to provide lab and office space for as many 20 life sciences startups. Each startup will have to make monthly payments to stay at the Janssen Labs at San Diego, but J&J says there is no “quid pro quo,” and each tenant will get office space and access to a common area with wet lab research equipment that would be difficult for a company to afford on its own.

—Anadys Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ANDS), the San Diego-based biotech developing antiviral drugs for treating hepatitis, agreed to an all-cash buyout offer worth $230 million from Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant. Roche’s offer to pay $3.70 for each Anadys share was a 256 percent premium over the previous trading day’s close of $1.04. Anadys had just released encouraging results from a mid-stage clinical trial of its lead hepatitis C drug.

—Venture capital firms invested $6.95 billion in 876 deals throughout the United States—including $202 million in 21 venture deals in the San Diego area—during the three months that ended Sept. 30, according to the MoneyTree Report. The third-quarter survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the National Venture Capital Association, and Thomson Reuters also highlighted a shift in VC activity, with a pullback in funding for life sciences. That was also true in San Diego, where nine life sciences companies got $26 million, or 13 percent of total VC investments here.

—Following a two-year setback, San Diego’s Sequenom (NASDAQ: SQNM) rolled out a laboratory-developed blood test that can determine with … Next Page »

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San Diego-based Sequenom (NASDAQ: SQNM) says today it’s making a prenatal test for fetal Down syndrome available in 20 U.S. cities, 2 1/2 years after the company shelved the debut of an earlier Down syndrome test due to “mishandled” research data.

The proprietary test announced today is a laboratory-developed test (LDT) that detects an abnormal chromosome for Down syndrome in the fetal DNA fragments found in a maternal blood sample. A Sequenom-funded study that confirms that the technique is 99.1 percent accurate also is being published in the journal Genetics in Medicine by an independent group of researchers.

A spokeswoman for Sequenom says the test announced today is a “completely new” diagnostic approach that analyzes fetal DNA circulating in the mother’s bloodstream, using next-generation genetic “shotgun” sequencing technology developed by Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN), the San Diego maker of genetic-analysis equipment.

The diagnostic technology that Sequenom shelved in 2009 was based on detecting fetal RNA in maternal blood samples. Following an internal investigation into the mishandled clinical data, Sequenom ousted CEO Harry Stylli, former R&D chief Elizabeth Dragon, and three other employees.

Sequenom says the 20 cities where its MaterniT21 test is now available are part of a phased rollout of the new test, which is intended for pregnant women who are at higher risk for Down syndrome (roughly half of the mental retardation cases in the United States). Out of 4.2 million births in the U.S. each year, about 750,000 are considered high-risk (based mostly on pre-screening or because the mother is 35 or older). Only about one out of five of these high-risk cases, however, undergo amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling, two invasive procedures that can accurately determine Down syndrome but carry a slightly higher risk of miscarriage.

Sequenom is offering a different approach. A doctor would first send a maternal blood sample for the MaterniT21 test to the Sequenom Center for Molecular Medicine in San Diego, a lab certified under federal CLIA regulations just over a year ago.  (The company announced last week it is planning a similar CLIA-certified lab in North Carolina). The physician would receive the results in 8-10 business days, and determine if a higher-risk procedure is warranted. Andy Pollock of The New York Times wrote a thorough account of the technology here.

On Sept. 2, Sequenom said it had agreed to a SEC “cease and desist” order arising from an investigation into Sequenom’s misconduct, which securities regulators began in 2009. That order was focused on claims the company had made about its prior RNA technology, and included no monetary penalties.

The U.S. Attorney filed a criminal charge against Dragon in mid-2010 that alleged she had disseminated materially false information and had made misleading statements concerning tests of Sequenom’s RNA technology. She pleaded guilty, but died in February, before sentencing, according to the company’s last earnings filing.

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Accumetrics CEO Tim Still tells me much has changed since I profiled the San Diego medical diagnostics company in 2009.

The venture-backed company makes an automated diagnostic instrument that uses a disposable test kit to measure a cardiovascular patient’s specific response to anti-clotting drugs. More than a million Americans are hospitalized each year due to heart attacks, strokes, and other complications of acute coronary syndrome, according to the American Heart Association. Millions more are prescribed clopidogrel (Plavix) each year, usually to treat atherosclerosis or after doctors have inserted a drug-eluting stent to alleviate blockage in a blood vessel.

Accumetrics initially won FDA approval for its test to measure the anti-clotting effectiveness of aspirin, and later got the okay to measure clopidogrel, abciximab (ReoPro), and eptifibatide (Integrillin).

Since then, the FDA approved two rival anti-clotting drugs similar to clopidogrel—Eli Lilly’s prasugrel (Effient) in mid-2009, and AstraZeneca’s ticagrelor (Brilinta) earlier this year.

The market today, according to Accumetrics’ Still, boils down to clopidogrel, prasugrel, and ticagrelor, which he views as the three leading anti-clotting therapies. The drugs work in similar ways (by blocking a signaling pathway that makes platelets sticky) to help prevent blood platelets from clumping together. Clopidogrel led the field by far—it was the third largest prescription drug in the U.S. last year—but is scheduled to go generic next year.

Yet patient response to each drug varies widely. Some experts estimate that 30 percent of patients don’t respond to standard clopidogrel dosing, while another 20 to 30 percent have a high platelet reaction, which is why it is essential to test how patients respond to the drugs.

Accumetrics lead diagnostic test, called VerifyNow P2Y12, is currently used to measure the anti-clotting effectiveness of clopidogrel and prasugrel. (The company has not been cleared to test ticagrelor, which was only approved by the FDA in July).

The steep price of the company’s shoebox-sized VerifyNow instrument, which is now about $10,000, has become less of a concern as the company’s sales gained traction in the U.S. hospital market, Still says. “Keep in mind that we’re a razor/razor blade business model,” he adds. In other words, after buying a VerifyNow instrument, hospitals continue to buy the cartridges needed for each test, at a price that ranges from roughly $30 to more than $60 apiece.

By the end of this year, Still says he expects that Accumetrics’ diagnostic instruments will be in 700 to 750 of 2,200 U.S. hospitals where doctors insert drug-eluting stents.

As a result, Accumetrics’ workforce has grown from 80 to about 100 employees over the past two years. And by the end of this year, Still says Accumetrics expects to generate annual revenue between $24 million and $25 million—roughly double the company’s sales in 2009. The company has raised roughly $76 million from investors, which includes Apothecary Capital, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, RiverVest Venture Partners, Arnerich Massena & Associates, PTV Sciences, and Essex Woodland Health Ventures. “By the fourth quarter of 2011, we’ll be in a position where the company begins to make money,” he says.

“We’ve really stayed true to our strategy,” Still says, “and we’ve continued to make progress. We’re one of the small diagnostics companies that has had pretty strong growth.”

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[Updated at 12:30 to correct grand prize amount] After nearly two months of development, pitching, advice, and several rounds of judging, the 2011 University of Washington Business Plan Competition is a wrap. The annual event drew 104 teams this year, which the UW’s Foster Business School says is a record. Last night, winners were named in several categories, with $60,000 in prize money handed out.

We stopped by the second round last month, where 37 teams presented their ideas in a big trade show atmosphere to compete for “investor dollars” that would move them to the sweet 16 round. I wasn’t judging, but I did profile a few interesting proto-companies from the crowd that fit our technology focus. Apparently, I wasn’t too prescient—although a few of the folks I looked at made the round of 16, none were finalists.

Here’s a look at the top award-winners from last night’s event. Go check out the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship website for more details on the rest of the honorees, including the full rundown on all the “best idea” prize-winners.

—Grand Prize, $25,000: PotaVida. This UW group is making a cheap, reusable electronic device that helps people in third world countries disinfect drinking water with sunlight. Solar disinfection is an easy way of purifying water—you just put plastic bottles out in the sun until the heat and UV rays have made it safe to drink. But knowing when the process is complete isn’t automatic. The PotaVida device uses inexpensive electronics and blinking lights to tell people when enough light exposure has taken place to make the water safe.

—Second Prize, $10,000: Stockbox Grocers. Urban areas are sometimes plagued with “food deserts,” areas where good, fresh food is much harder to find than snacks and junk from the corner store. The Stockbox Grocers team, from Bainbridge Graduate Institute, wants to change that by transforming old metal shipping containers into pop-up grocery stores. They can be placed in parking lots or other open areas, and provide fresh produce and other grocery staples relatively cheaply.

—Finalist Prize, $5,000: Solanux. Starches can be a problem for people with diabetic symptoms, or even people watching their weight, because they’re closely related to sugars—the body burns them for immediate energy, or stores them away as fat. The Solanux team, including members from Washington State University and the Univeristy of Idaho, makes patented potato ingredients with a high level of something called resistant starch, which acts more like fiber in the digestive system.

—Finalist Prize, $5,000: LodeSpin Labs. Researchers say a relatively new technique called Magnetic Particle Imaging has the potential to replace CT scans and MRI for some medical patients. Invented by Phillips, the technique uses magnetic nanoparticles that can be injected into the bloodstream and then read by scanners, giving a real-time, 3D view of the body’s inner workings. LodeSpin Labs, from the UW, makes tracers that can be used in this technology.

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Much of the action this week was taking place downtown, at the 6th annual Convergence Summit hosted by the nonprofit Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance. The three-day conference included CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, executives, and innovators—and we’ve got the highlights of that and other area life sciences news wrapped up here.

—San Diego’s Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), the largest wireless chipmaker in the world, said during the summit that it’s helping the X Prize Foundation set the ground rules for a proposed $10 million Tricorder X Prize. X Prize organizers want a real-life medical tricorder—like the one Dr. McCoy used on Star Trek—that is portable, uses wireless sensors, and has the capability to rapidly diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board-certified physicians.

—Eric Topol, the Scripps Health cardiologist and director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, said during his talk at the convergence summit that he wants to start a new medical school for tech-minded students in San Diego. Topol says medical students should be learning how to handle new wireless technologies and genomics in their practice. Topol was instrumental in founding the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine in 2002.

—Exton, PA-based ViroPharma (NASDAQ: VPHM) agreed to pay San Diego’s Halozyme Therapeutics (NASDAQ: HALO) as much as $83 million to license Halozyme’s recombinant human hyaluronidase. ViroPharma wants to develop the Halozyme compound as an experimental injection medication for a rare genetic disorder that causes potentially life-threatening swelling.

—San Diego’s Meritage Pharma said its experimental drug for a little-known condition called eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) passed a mid-stage clinical trial of 71 children. The study found … Next Page »

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San Diego-based Gen-Probe (NASDAQ: GPRO) says today the FDA has cleared its nucleic acid amplification test to detect the sexually transmitted infection Trichomonas vaginalis for use in the United States. Gen-Probe says its Aptima assay is the first such test to be approved specifically for Trichomonas vaginalis, which is the most common curable sexually transmitted disease in the United States (with about 7.4 million infections a year). In a statement from the company, Gen-Probe CEO Carl Hull says the assay will be a convenient tool for physicians and laboratories because it employs the same technology as Gen-Probe’s tests for Chlamydia and gonorrhea, can be used with the same patient samples, and runs on the company’s fully automated Tigris system.

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San Diego’s life sciences sector must have been lying low over the past week, as there was scant news from local biotech, diagnostics, and medical device companies. Our roundup is here.

—Biopharma executive Stephen Kaldor, who was CEO at San Diego-based Ambrx from 2007 to 2010, has joined Versant Ventures as a venture partner. The firm has offices in San Francisco, Menlo Park, CA, and Newport Beach, CA, but Kaldor, who joined in January, will remain in San Diego, according to the Versant website. Kaldor is currently the acting CEO of a Quanticell, an early stage biotech focused on combatting cancer resistance.

—San Diego’s Astute Medical which raised $26.5 million in a Series B venture round last May, says it has extended the round and raised an additional $13 million to develop new diagnostic tests for acute conditions that require rapid diagnosis. The company raised $6.2 million in its Series A round of venture funding in 2008. The startup, founded in 2007 by CEO Christopher Hibberd and chief scientific officer Paul McPherson, has been working to identify protein biomarkets that could be used to help diagnose kidney injury, acute coronary syndromes, cerebrovascular injury, abominal pain, sepsis, and other acute conditions.

—San Diego-based Aethlon Medical, which has been developing therapeutic blood filtration devices for treating infectious disease and cancer, says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the company’s request to export its “Hemopurifier” device to India. The FDA’s approval was granted under a section of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that allows the export of certain medical devices that have not yet received premarket approval in the U.S. by the FDA.

—Newport Beach, CA-based Roth Capital’s annual growth stock conference is bouncing back this year. The 23rd annual OC Growth Stock Conference, which begins Monday at the Ritz Carlton in Dana Point, CA, is billed as Roth’s largest conference to date, with more than 430 presenting companies—including 135 biotech, specialty pharmaceutical, and medical technology companies. About 350 companies presented last year, and 212 companies presented in 2009. Among the small cap life science companies attending the three-day, invitation-only conference for institutional investors are San Diego’s Ardea Biosciences (NASDAQ: RDEA), Avanir Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AVNR), Dexcom (NASDAQ: DXCM), Inovio Pharmaceuticals (AMEX: INO), Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS), Neurocrine Biosciences (NASDAQ: NBIX), NuVasive (NASDAQ: NUVA), Senomyx (NASDAQ: SNMX), Somaxon Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SOMX), Trius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: TSRX), Santarus (NASDAQ: SNTS), and Volcano (NASDAQ: VOLC).

—The San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp., UC San Diego Extension, and the San Diego Workforce Partnership have been collaborating to develop a growth strategy for the region’s cluster of healthcare information technology companies. Researchers at UC San Diego Extension have been conducting interviews with health IT industry leaders and surveying health IT employers. The data collected is intended to help determine the cluster’s potential, identify important issues, trends, and key economic and legislative factors that drive growth of the sector. The EDC has organized a series of workshops this month to review the preliminary findings and collect feedback from industry leaders.

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San Diego’s Astute Medical, which raised $26.5 million in a Series B venture round last May, says it has extended the round and raised an additional $13 million to develop new diagnostic tests for acute conditions that require rapid diagnosis. Investors include Domain Associates, Delphi Ventures, De Novo Ventures and Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation. The company raised $6.2 million in its Series A round of venture funding in 2008. The startup, founded in 2007 by CEO Christopher Hibberd and chief scientific officer Paul McPherson Ph.D., has been working to identify protein biomarkers that could be used to help diagnose such critical issues as kidney injury, acute coronary syndromes, cerebrovascular injury, abominal pain, and sepsis.

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San Diego’s life sciences news began to slow down over the past week, but there was still plenty of items to round up. Happy holidays from Xconomy.

—San Diego’s emerging algal biofuels industry got encouragement from the U.S. Navy, which said it will need 336 million gallons of advanced biofuels a year, beginning in 2020, to meet a goal set by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. The Navy secretary wants to use alternative energy sources to provide 50 percent of the energy for all its war-fighting ships, planes, vehicles and shore installations in less than 10 years.  That’s good news for San Diego-based General Atomics, a private defense contractor developing algal biofuels for the Pentagon.

—San Diego-based Lpath said it has granted Pfizer an exclusive option for a worldwide license to develop and commercialize its lead monoclonal antibody drug candidate, iSONEP, as a possible treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration and other disorders of the eye. Under the agreement, Pfizer will provide Lpath with an upfront option payment of $14 million and share the cost of planned early stage clinical trials. If Pfizer exercises additional options, Lpath could receive as much as $497.5 million and sales-based royalties.

—Shares of San Diego’s Arena Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ARNA) fell 24 cents, or almost 12 percent, yesterday after the biopharmaceutical company said it will likely be the end of 2011 before the company will resubmit the new drug application for its weight loss drug, lorcaserin. Arena, which closed at $1.80 a share in heavy trading, said it’s now planning new studies of the drug’s potential cancer risks after meeting this week with the Food and Drug Administration. “The meeting discussions reinforce our position that we have a path forward to seek FDA approval of lorcaserin,” Arena CEO Jack Lief says in a statement from the company.

—Reva Medical, a San Diego maker of absorbable stents, is scheduled to begin trading today on the Australian Securities Exchange after the medical device company raised almost $85 million in its initial public offering.

—Santa Clara, CA-based Affymetrix (NASDAQ: AFFX) said a federal judge dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit that San Diego-based Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN) had filed against it.

—San Diego diagnostic product maker Gen-Probe (NASDAQ: GPRO), paid $53 million to acquire GTI Diagnostics of Waukesha, WI. Gen-Probe said GTI’s technology will expand its product offerings with diagnostics focused on transplantation.

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San Diego’s Gen-Probe (NASDAQ: GPRO), which specializes in molecular diagnostic products and services, says today it paid $53 million in cash to acquire GTI Diagnostics, a Waukesha, WI-based company focused on transplant diagnostics. In a statement this morning, Gen-Probe CEO Carl Hull says, “The acquisition gives us access to growing coagulation and transfusion-related blood bank products that we can sell to our current customer base.” GTI develops and manufactures the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) antibody detection products sold by Gen-Probe under its LIFECODES brand, along with a number of other HLA-related testing products. The sellers included the Riverside Company, a global private equity firm, and individual stakeholders, including GTI founders and executives.

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Venture funding for high tech companies made a stronger showing during the third quarter, but life science deals still accounted for more than half the capital invested in the San Diego area, according to the latest MoneyTree Report. Venture investments in local biotech, medical diagnostics, and device companies also made up the most of the deals counted during the second quarter.

Of the $231 million total that was invested in 32 San Diego companies during the quarter, $129.7 million (56 percent) was invested in 17 companies (53 percent) specializing in drug discovery and development, diagnostics, or medical devices.

In the previous quarter, 72 percent of the total VC investment in the region ($148 million of the $204.9 million total) went to life science startups. In the same quarter of 2009, San Diego’s life science companies got 65 percent of the total ($163 million of the $252 million total).

The total amount of all venture capital invested in the San Diego region increased about 13 percent from the previous quarter (when $204.9 million went into 28 companies). But it was down 8 percent from the same quarter of 2009 (when $252 million was invested in 36 companies). The MoneyTree Report is prepared by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm through a partnership with the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters.

Media and Entertainment startups in the San Diego area got the second biggest share of venture capital, with three companies receiving $61.6 million (27 percent) of the total invested.

San Diego’s software sector accounted for the third biggest chunk of venture capital, with $19.3 million (8 percent) invested in five deals.

Here is a list of the top 10 deals in San Diego, based on data from MoneyTree:

1. SkinIt, San Diego. Provides adhesive “skins” to personalize laptops, mobile phones, and other consumer electronics. $60 million. Investors include ABS Capital Partners, Northwest Equity Partners.

2. Otonomy, San Diego. Developing drug treatments for hearing loss and balance disorders. $38.5 million. Investors: Novo Ventures, RiverVest Venture Partners, Avalon Ventures, Domain Associates, TPG Biotech.

3. AutoGenomics, Vista, CA. Provides automated microarray-based diagnostic technology for identifying … Next Page »

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Funding for San Diego life sciences startups can come in the form of small financing deals and as federal Small Business Innovation Research grants that can help to keep small biotechs alive. Allow me to aggregate all that and other life sciences news of the week for you.

—At a time when venture capital funding remains at low ebb, the National Cancer Institute plans to award a total of $110 million nationwide in Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants. Life Science entrepreneurs also can now get as much as $3 million over three years under the new Phase II Bridge Award program.

—I profiled San Diego-based Biocept, which is aiming its diagnostics technology at four of the most common types of solid tumors: prostate, breast, colorectal, and non-small cell lung cancers. Biocept CEO Stephen Coutts says the technology is sensitive enough to consistently capture and quantify extremely rare tumor cells that might comprise only one in 5-to-10 billion cells in a blood sample.

—Finistere Ventures, a San Diego venture capital firm that has maintained a low profile over the past five years, plans to raise another venture fund next year. Finistere invests mainly in early stage medical device and agricultural biotech startups.

—New York-based Ramius Value and Opportunity Advisors is still trying to meet with board members at San Diego’s Cypress Bioscience (NASDAQ: CYPB) to discuss the private equity firm’s $160 million buyout offer. Cypress has spurned Ramius so far.

—A sweep of San Diego’s “under-the-radar” deals in July by CB Insights yielded three life science financings, including Novalar Pharmaceuticals, the specialty dental pharmaceutical company that raised just over $1 million in debt, options to acquire securities, and other securities. CB Insights, a New York firm that tracks private companies, also turned up a $552,500 financing for Althea Technologies, a San Diego contract research organization, and $145,000 in debt for Chimeros, a San Diego biotech developing nano-scale cancer therapeutics.

—SG Biofuels of Encinitas, CA, and Life Technologies (NASDAQ: LIFE) of Carlsbad, CA, said they completely sequenced the genome of Jatropha curcas, a shrub that SG Biofuels is developing as a source for jet fuel. I was reminded after the story published that Synthetic Genomics said it already had sequenced the Jatropha Genome in May 2009.

—Procter & Gamble boosted San Diego-based Somaxon’s efforts to launch its new insomnia drug yesterday by saying it would help sell doxepin (Silenor) to thousands of U.S. doctors and pharmacies. The partners plan to begin marketing the drug next month.

—San Diego-based NeuroVigil’s founding chairman and CEO, Philip Low, was selected as a 2010 TR35 award recipient yesterday. The MIT magazine Technology Review cited Low for developing the iBrain, a small portable wireless device that monitors electrical brain activity through a single electrode instead of the mass of wires and pads usually needed for gathering such measurements.

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Alverix, a San Jose, CA-based company that specializes in point-of-care biomedical diagnostics, named Richard “Ric” Tarbox as CEO. Tarbox, a former senior VP of corporate development at San Diego-based Quidel, was most recently the vice president of strategy management at Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH). Alverix, which got $7.7 million in venture funding in 2008 from New Venture Partners and Safeguard Scientifics, was spun out three years ago from Avago Technologies, which was itself a spinout from Agilent and Hewlett Packard.

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Gen-Probe (NASDAQ: GPRO) appears to be on the right track with its experimental prostate cancer test, judging from a raft of recent clinical studies in men being screened for prostate cancer.

The research, presented at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association in San Francisco last week, provided additional evidence that Gen-Probe’s PCA3 urine test might help eliminate the need for additional biopsies in men with positive PSA tests.

The PSA, or prostate specific antigen test, is the primary screening test for prostate cancer. Because the test has a high false-positive rate, men must undergo biopsies, a painful procedure in which prostate tissue is taken for analysis, to confirm the presence of cancer.

Men with positive PSA test results and negative biopsies have a dilemma. “The PSA said they have cancer but their doctors can’t find it,” said Gen-Probe spokesman Michael Watts. If these patients continue to test positive on a follow up PSA, they face a second biopsy, he said.

Gen-Probe’s PCA3 test has a relatively low false-positive rate, so it could be used to assess the need for a second biopsy. A high score might indicate a biopsy was needed, whereas a low score might indicate a low risk of aggressive cancer, making a second biopsy unnecessary.

In one key study presented at the meeting, the PCA3 was used to analyze urine samples from 1,946 men. Results showed … Next Page »

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Lucine Biotechnology founder Chandler Marrs won the “Best Overall” and “People’s Choice” awards at last night’s Tech Coast Angels’ Quick Pitch event in Irvine, CA. Most of the 12 finalists making 90-second presentations were entrepreneurs from Orange County and nearby communities. Lucine is developing low-cost salivary tests for horomone-related Obstetrics-Gynecology conditions. FlexCell Systems, a startup supplying electro-deposition equipment for silicon wafers, won “Best Presentation,” and Lillium Industries was named “Best Funding Opportunity” for its FDA-approved alternatives for improving lifespan.

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San Diego’s Astute Medical, a medical diagnostics startup that specializes in identifying acute conditions that require rapid diagnosis, says it has completed a $26.5 million series B round of venture funding co-led by Domain Associates and Delphi Ventures. The three-year-old company, which has raised total funding of more than $32.7 million, says its focus includes abdominal pain, acute coronary symptoms, cerebrovascular injury, kidney injury, and sepsis. Astute plans to use the funding to advance development of protein biomarkers with the goal of moving to commercialization.

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It must be nice to be the CEO of a life sciences company that sells itself.

When Tina Nova stepped up to the microphone at the Roth Capital Partners Growth Stock Conference in Laguna Niguel, CA, yesterday, the Genoptix CEO was playing to a nearly full house. Investors and analysts occupied all but two or three seats, which wasn’t the case in many of the other presentations given on the last day of the three-day conference (even though it drew a record total of more than 3,000 attendees, according to organizers).

Carlsbad, CA-based Genoptix (NASDAQ: GXDX), as Nova succinctly puts it, “delivers personalized and comprehensive diagnostic services to community-based hematologists and oncologists.” Doctors who specialize in blood

Tina Nova

“What we return to physicians is not individual test results, but a comprehensive diagnosis that enables the doctor to get that patient on the proper cancer drug at the right time,” Nova says. The company uses FedEx to deliver patient samples within 24 hours, whether they’re from Maine or … Next Page »

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San Diego-based Sequenom (NASDAQ: SQNM) disclosed in a regulatory filing it has issued 367,547 additional shares of its common stock, valued at $1.5 million, to settle claims stemming from its acquisition of Ann Arbor, MI-based SensiGen’s molecular diagnostic tests. Sequenom and SensiGen said last January the San Diego biotech was buying a variety of diagnostic tests from privately held SensiGen in a stock-and-cash deal valued at $8.7 million. The SensiGen principals who received an aggregate 71,836 shares as part of that deal notified Sequenom in July that they had suffered about $1.3 million in damages, based on Sequenom’s breached representations and warranties. Sequenom said a few months earlier that it had mishandled data from clinical trials for its non-invasive test for Down syndrome, a revelation that has triggered at least two federal investigations.

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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 company Sequenom (NASDAQ: SQNM) scuttled the debut of a non-invasive prenatal Down syndrome test amid a data-mishandling scandal. CEO Harry Stylli was fired along with four other employees. Two others, including CFO Paul Hawran, resigned. The future of the diagnostic test is now in doubt and in November the company, which was being investigated by the SEC and FBI, said it was taking steps to conserve cash to improve its odds of survival.

—Dissident shareholders billionaire Carl Icahn and Eastbourne Capital won two of five board seats in a proxy fight that centered on San Diego-based Amylin Pharmaceuticals’ (NASDAQ: AMLN) strategic management of its strong-selling diabetes drug exenatide (Byetta). Months after its partial victory, Eastbourne sold its entire Amylin stake—after Eastbourne founder Rick Barry voiced some frustration over Amylin’s slow pace of change. Since then, the company struck an important deal to co-develop weight-loss drugs with Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceuticals.

—The spread of swine flu provided a fleeting business opportunity to companies working on diagnostic equipment or novel vaccines. Quidel (NASDAQ: QDEL) reported a surge in sales driven by purchases of its rapid flu test and Life Technologies (NASDAQ: LIFE) saw a bump in revenue from sales to public health laboratories of equipment and reagents for swine flu testing. Funding from the Navy enabled Vical (NASDAQ: VICL) to conduct pre-clinical studies of an experimental swine flu vaccine, but the company has not received the added support needed to conduct a human test.

—San Diego’s emergence as a center for algae-based biofuels came into view during the Algae Biomass Summit in October. Two of the most closely watched algae biofuels companies are here: Sapphire Energy, which is backed by billionaire Bill Gates, and Synthetic Genomics, whose partner, ExxonMobil, announced plans in July to invest $600 million investment in algae-derived biofuels. They and other start-ups are taking advantage of the rich pool of biotechnology talent here. Still, there is no denying it’s early days, and the technology needs to prove itself.

—Biotechs Arena Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ARNA) and Orexigen Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OREX) continued their race for the next blockbuster obesity drug. The companies have released clinical trial results showing … Next Page »

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Enigma Diagnostics, the UK genetic diagnosis instrument maker that is setting up its U.S. shop in San Diego, today named Jorge Garces as president and CEO of the U.S. team. Garces was previously a vice president at Hologic, and managed the R&D, clinical, and manufacturing business unit in Madison, WI. Enigma also named another Hologic vice president, Greg Hamilton, as CFO and COO of the U.S. team.

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