It might be the dog days of summer, but San Diego’s life sciences companies kept up a busy flow of cool news over the past week. Get your update here.

—Isis Pharmaceuticals, the Carlsbad, CA, biotech that specializes in so-called antisense technology, is getting ready to test a new treatment later this year for patients with an aggressive form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Isis (NASDAQ: ISIS) is planning the first clinical trial of a treatment known as ISIS-SODRIX, a drug designed to shut down the genetic RNA machinery that enables the production of disease-causing proteins. Luke reported the treatment also could pioneer a new way of delivering antisense drugs for a variety of neurological disorders.

—San Diego’s TorreyPines Therapeutics (NASDAQ: TPTX) has agreed to a reverse merger with Novato, CA-based Raptor Pharmaceuticals. To pull off the deal, however, TorreyPines must get its shareholders to vote to approve the deal. That sounds easy enough, but TorreyPines was unable to muster enough shareholder votes in July to approve a resolution to dissolve the company.

—A Boston-area researcher said a new drug developed by San Diego’s BrainCells Inc. could someday prove effective in treating depression. The drug known as BCI-952, which combines buspirone and melatonin, was not expected to work. But it’s getting a second look after Dr. Maurizio Fava, of Massachusetts General Hospital, presented promising results in a clinical trial of 142 patients diagnosed with major depression.

—San Diego’s La Jolla Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: LJPC) plans to seek shareholder approval for a liquidation plan. As Denise reported, the company disclosed in a recent SEC filing that it has discharged substantially all of its obligations to creditors and is working to satisfy those that remain. The biotech also said it has settled a lawsuit with former partner BioMarin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: BMRN) of Novato, CA.

—San Diego’s Inovio Biomedical (AMEX: INO) has raised $30 million from the direct sale of 11.1 million shares and 2.8 million warrants to institutional investors. Inovio is focused on the development of vaccines to prevent or treat cancers and chronic infectious diseases. The company’s delivery solutions are based on electroporation, which uses brief, controlled electrical pulses to create temporary pores in cell membranes, which makes it easier for cells to take in a useful biopharmaceutical.

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TorreyPines Therapeutics (NASDAQ: TPTX) has found a new solution to its cash woes: a merger with Novato, CA-based Raptor Pharmaceuticals. To pull off the deal, however, TorreyPines must overcome an old problem: getting its shareholders to vote.

Few biotechs come to an end as embarrassingly as San Diego’s TorreyPines Therapeutics. When its board of directors called for liquidation earlier this year, shareholders displayed their apathy by failing to vote in sufficient numbers for the resolution to pass by the required margin.

So the board gave shareholders more time to turn in their proxies – until July 16. But TorreyPines still couldn’t muster enough votes, so it extended the voting until July 30. It looked like TorreyPines couldn’t even succeed at failing.

Now things could change. Last week, just before the polls “closed” for the third time, the company’s board endorsed a new proposal. TorreyPines announced plans to merge with Raptor Pharmaceuticals (OTC BB: [[ticker:RPTP.OB]]) of Novato, CA., a three-year-old company working on drugs for rare diseases or those with few treatment options. The merged company will be called Raptor and will be headed by Raptor’s current management team. Raptor shareholders will own 95 percent of the merged company. To learn more about the deal, I left messages for executives and PR representatives of both companies yesterday, but no one got back to me.

TorreyPines brings little to the table. It already has sold off much of its pipeline and is down to three employees. But it has something Raptor lacks—a NASDAQ listing. The companies say that when the deal closes, they will initiate a reverse stock split to keep the merged company in compliance with a NASDAQ requirement that shares list for at least $1. That will take some doing. Raptor’s shares have been trading over-the-counter in the 40-cent range. TorreyPines shares have been hovering around 13 cents.

The merged company faces a tough road. In its filing for the quarter ending May 31, Raptor said it anticipated receiving enough cash from deals already in motion to fund operations through the first quarter of 2010. But first, the two companies must persuade TorreyPines shareholders to weigh in on merger deal. Given recent history, that’s far from a sure thing.

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We saw a couple of San Diego’s life sciences companies successfully raise capital in the past week. But a couple of others experienced problems that would have been difficult to anticipate.

—Sciele Pharma, an Atlanta, GA, unit of Japan’s Shionogi & Co. left San Diego’s Victory Pharma at the altar last week, after announcing in May that it would acquire Victory Pharma for $150 million. Sciele said only that the cancellation was due to an unforseen development after the agreement was signed. However, Denise found that an FDA advisory committee’s call for banning drugs that combine acetaminophen and narcotics could affect two of the pain relievers marketed by Victory Pharma.

—San Diego’s Sorrento Therapeutics, which raised $2.3 million in June, announced it has arranged a reverse merger with QuikByte Software, a Florida company with registered securities but is no longer in business. Once the merger is completed, Sorrento Therapeutics will take over the dormant shell company to become a publicly traded company. QuikByte will officially be renamed and relocate its headquarters to San Diego. The deal, which is expected to close by the end of September, is subject to QuikByte getting an aggregate investment of $2 million. Sorrento Therapeutics specializes in new methods for developing fully human monoclonal antibodies. Antonius Schuh will continue to head the startup as CEO.

—Telegraph Hill Partners, a San Francisco private equity firm, has put $5 million in venture funding into Poway, CA-based Nexus Biosystems, a four-year-old biotech. Nexus specializes in making automated sample storage and retrieval systems for use by biotech laboratories in storing biological samples.

—TorreyPines Therapeutics is trying again today to muster enough shareholder votes to approve a liquidation plan for the San Diego biotech. The company had to continue its special shareholder meeting last week after failing to get a simple majority of shareholder votes to approve a measure to dissolve the company.

—Carlsbad, CA-based biomedical diagnostics startup Helixis has raised $5.5 million out of a planned secondary round of $6.5 million in venture capital funding. The company plans to commercialize advanced molecular diagnostic technology developed by two prominent Caltech scientists.

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TorreyPines Therapeutics (Nasdaq: TPTX) plans to wind down its business after the San Diego biotech’s board of directors unanimously approved a plan to liquidate and dissolve the company. TorreyPines, which laid off most of its workforce last year, says it intends to call a special shareholders meeting to seek approval of the dissolution plan. While the board approved the plan, the company says it continues to seek alternative financing and other strategic options. If shareholders approve the plan of dissolution, TorreyPines says it will file the necessary paperwork, satisfy its remaining financial obligations, and provide for any unresolved claims and liabilities. Under the plan, the company’s stock also will be delisted from the Nasdaq Global Market.

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TorreyPines Therapeutics (Nasdaq: TPTX) says it has reduced its workforce to just three employees—the CEO, CFO, and Vice President/General Counsel. In September 2008 the company said it had 13 employees, which was down from more than 40 at the beginning of last year. The company, which was known as Neurogenetics until 2005, is focused on developing treatments for migraines. TorreyPines sold its Alzheimer’s research program to partner Eisai Co. four months ago.

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In 2005, Gonul Velicelebi was the vice president of research and drug discovery at TorreyPines Therapeutics (NASDAQ: TPTX) when scientists there determined that a molecule dubbed STIM1 played a crucial role in activating immune cells.

To Velicelebi, STIM1 was like a key that helped open a hidden pathway that scientists had been seeking for 20 years. It also opened a new path for Velicelebi, who in 2006 founded CalciMedica, a startup focused on developing a variety of small molecule drugs to suppress autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. “This is a whole new pathway for modulating immune response,” she says.

A key aspect to CalciMedica’s approach is that it appears to sidestep a buildup of toxic compounds associated with the long-term use of some drugs prescribed to prevent organ transplant rejection and to treat autoimmune diseases. “There is a huge unmet need,” Velicelebi says. “Rheumatoid arthritis alone is 2 percent of the population,” and then there is lupus and inflammatory bowel diseases, like Crohn’s disease.

The TorreyPines team had pinpointed STIM1 as a key component in …Next Page »

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TorreyPines Therapeutics (NASDAQ:TPTX) says it has agreed to sell its Alzheimer’s disease genetics research program for $1.5 million to partner Eisai Co. TorreyPines will record the payment from the Nov. 6 deal in its fourth quarter financial results, the company said today in a filng with government regulators. 

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