Eli Lilly Plans 125,000 Square Foot Biotech Center of Excellence in UTC
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. will locate its West Coast Operations in a 125,000 square feet facility it has leased for ten years in the University Town Center neighborhood, combining its Applied Molecular Evolutions unit and recently-acquired SGX Pharmaceuticals into this location as part of the west coast Biotechnology Center of Excellence.
The facility, which once housed Qualcomm's cell phone manufacturing division, will be shared with Kyocera Wireless, which occupies 43 percent of the 450,000 square foot Campus Point facility, set on 42 acres.
Veralliance Properties announced that Lilly signed a 10-year lease for roughly 125,000 square feet of space at Campus Pointe, a two-story Class A office/life science project located at 10300 Campus Point Drive. The project sits on an expansive 42-acre site in an enclave of UTC adjacent to Torrey Pines. Lilly plans to locate its West Coast operations in the campus upon completion of renovations in March 2009. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“We are essentially rebuilding the entire site down to the steel structure with a focus on being LEED Certified, said Bret E. Gossett, principal with Veralliance Properties. “The result will be a state-of-the-art environmentally-friendly location that is unlike anything in the market today.”
Veralliance Properties’ renovations of Campus Pointe will feature an ultramodern design by San Diego architect Tucker Sadler. In addition to constructing a new translucent green glass curtain wall providing floor to ceiling glass for all new tenants, the project will include a two-story atrium entrance with a “pass through” lobby leading to a two-story spiral staircase. Amenities include a multi-purpose conference center, fitness room complete with showers and lockers, and bistro with an outdoor seating area.
Dr. Thomas Bumol, vice president of biotechnology discovery research and president of Lilly-owned Applied Molecular Evolution (AME) said Lilly is “excited to combine both AME and its recently-acquired SGX Pharmaceuticals into this location as part of the west coast Biotechnology Center of Excellence we are creating.”
In the transaction, Brent Jacobs, Greg Bisconti and Brian Cooper of Cushman & Wakefield’s Life Science Group represented Eli Lilly and Company. Veralliance Properties was represented by Mark Wayne and Steve Wolf, also from Cushman & Wakefield.
Veralliance Properties is a corporate real estate solutions’ company focused on the acquisition, development and management of office and life science assets totaling over 2 million square feet of existing and planned space. Veralliance Properties is headquartered in San Diego at 8910 University Center Lane, Suite 630. The company website is www.veralliance.com and the phone number is 858-643-9100.
UCSD Leases Nearly 50,000 Square Feet of Lab Research Space in Torrey Pines
Real estate brokerage Grubb & Ellis|BRE Commercial said that UCSD has signed a 10-year lease valued at over $19 million in the Torrey Pines submarket of San Diego.
The 48,233-square-foot biotech research facility is located at 3525 John Hopkins Court. The property was recently vacated by Schering Plough and will house several different divisions of the university's research arms.
Dave Odmark of Grubb and Ellis|BRE Commercial handled the transaction for both the lessee and the lessor, Del Mar Partnership.
Grubb & Ellis|BRE Commercial is one of Southern California's leading privately held commercial real estate brokerage firms. Based in San Diego and a leader in market coverage (as ranked by CoStar), Grubb & Ellis|BRE Commercial represents over 40 million square feet of industrial, office and retail properties throughout the region. The company also provides tenant representation services to key firms and offers investment and financing services.
Mentus Life Science Collaborator Linda Nye Gets NSF and Science Illustration Award
Mentus Life Science, a San Diego based fully integrated marketing communications agency, today announced its frequent collaborator, illustrator Linda Nye was awarded First Place Illustration in the 2008 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge sponsored by both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the journal Science. Illustrators, photographers, computer programmers and graphics specialists from around the world were invited to submit visualizations that would intrigue, explain and educate.
Linda Nye and the Exploratorium's Visualization Laboratory won first place for their illustration titled, Zoom Into the Human Bloodstream, in which perspective was manipulated to show the relationship between the tiniest oxygen atom and the comparatively giant organ, the heart. The work was funded by the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network.
Ms. Nye is a nationally known scientific illustrator who has completed illustrations and 3-D animations for nearly 100 Mentus clients including, Biocom, DiagnoCure, UCSD, and many others. She is also a contributor to BIOCOM's "Cell Culture" art exhibit in Terminal 2 of San Diego's Lindbergh Field.
This and other nanoscale illustrations by Linda Nye (including Zoom into a Butterfly's Wing) at the Visualization Lab can be downloaded at www.nisenet.org/viz_lab.
Invitrogen Named Biotechnology Sector Leader by Dow Jones Sustainability World Index
Invitrogen Corporation (NASDAQ:IVGN) was selected as a new member of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World) and named the leader of the biotechnology sector for 2008. Invitrogen ranked among the top 10 percent of the world’s 2,500 largest companies in terms of sustainability for its performance in corporate governance, labor practices, talent development, community involvement, workplace safety, climate change and environmental management.
Invitrogen also achieved the index’s highest ranking in customer relationship management, brand management, marketing practices, environmental policy and management, operational eco-efficiency, climate strategy, labor practice indicators, corporate citizenship and philanthropy, and stakeholder engagement. The company’s best practices include environmental resource conservation and waste reduction programs, an effort to reduce packaging, and the design of its Carlsbad headquarters to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification from the US Green Building Council.
Established in 1999, the DJSI is the first global index tracking the financial performance of leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide. The index employs a best-in-class approach to examine business approaches that create long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments. Companies’ strategies, management and performance are evaluated annually, and the analysis is used to select leading companies for investment purposes. This was the first time that Invitrogen applied to be considered for the DJSI.
To learn more about Invitrogen’s responsible stewardship initiatives, please visit http://www.invitrogen.com/site/us/en/home/corporate/Corporate-Citizenship.html.
Pharmatek Opens New Manufacturing Facility
Pharmatek – a pharmaceutical chemistry development organization supporting the pharmaceutical industry –announced the opening of its highly-potent and cytotoxic facility located in San Diego.
The 18,000 sq. ft. facility includes newly constructed analytical and formulation development laboratories and cGMP manufacturing suites dedicated to the development of highly-potent and cytotoxic drug product for early phase clinical trials.
The facility holds a State of California Food and Drug Branch (FDB) Drug Manufacturers License and is currently working on a number of highly-potent development projects. The FDB license authorizes Pharmatek to manufacture and ship clinical material from its state-of-the-art highly-potent and cytotoxic manufacturing and development site.
Pharmatek Laboratories Inc. is a premier pharmaceutical chemistry development company providing full-service pharmaceutical chemistry product development for the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmatek focuses on bringing client compounds from discovery to the clinic with services that include compound selection, analytical development, preformulation testing, formulation development, GMP manufacturing, stability storage and testing, and highly-potent and cytotoxic drug development.
BioSpace Launches Work Portal
BioSpace has incorporated useful career resources and content into BioSpace.com from The Biotech Work Portal, a national Web site created by the San Diego Workforce Partnership. The new content is intended to aid and assist biotechnology employers, employees, job seekers, and educators, as well as students and labor market researchers. Through the alliance BioSpace will provide to its industry-leading 400,000 monthly unique visitors detailed life science Career Definitions and Salary information, Labor Market Reports, Education and Training information, and Regional Cluster information. Content from the Biotech Work Portal is available through BioSpace at http://www.biospace.com/bwp_careers.aspx.
GlobeImmune hires Russo Partners
GlobeImmune, a Colorado-based biopharmaceutical company that develops treatments for infectious diseases and cancer, hired Russo Partners for message development and corporate media relations. The New York-based agency, which has an office in San Diego, began work on the account September 1 and will provide support for GlobeImmune's presence at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases annual meeting, which begins October 31. It was not a competitive bid.
F&R: Drugs, Medical Devices, Food Additives and More Affected by Court Opinion on Safe Harbor Immunity
Law firm Fish & Richardson says that U.S. patent law includes a safe harbor from patent infringement for preparing information for submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In a recent case, Proveris Scientific Corporation v. Innovasystems, Inc., the Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit interpreted the scope of the safe harbor and placed new limits on the type of immunity it confers. Products effected include pharmaceutical drugs, protein drugs, many medical devices and food additives.
Fish & Richardson attorneys have published an article that discusses the opinion and what it means to the biotech community. For a full text of the article, visit: www.fr.com/patentstorm
In Other Fish & Richardson news, the firm has opened an office in Houston, becoming Fish's 12th office in addition to 11 domestic offices including two in California (San Diego and Silicon Valley). The firm also has an office in Munich, Germany.
Crisis Management – Is Your Business Ready?
There is a significant difference between a business crisis and a business emergency. A crisis is an emergency that gets carried to a wide audience with or without the media fanning the flames. And, it should be treated with the same degree of care and trepidation as one would apply to an Anthrax scare or a nuclear meltdown. It's not a question of good or bad; it's the difference between bad and worse.
An acknowledged expert on the subject is Russ Moya, COO of AUI Security Solutions. Moya, a former Director of Security, Business Continuity/Crisis Management for a major pharmaceutical company, has coached companies both large and small through many crises over his more than 20 years in the business.
According to Moya, crises can take a variety of forms. The more common occurrences fall within clearly-defined categories: Sudden, Smoldering, Perceptual and Bizarre. These occurrences may lead to loss in sales and profits, jobs, business reputation, government intervention, operating expenses, employee morale, competitive strength, legal/consumer action or management mistrust.
The Goal of Crisis Planning is to prevent lawsuits, get employees back to work, restore reputation, get business growing, have no problems hiring replacement workers and make sure employees still trust management.
Moya suggests that crisis management is a clearly-defined process that serves the purpose of preparing the company for the unexpected and mitigating risks once the unexpected actually happens.
Moya notes there are three stages to the management of a crisis. The "Before" stage, which focuses on readiness, anticipation, diagnosis, development of the plan, and training. The "During" stage is consumed with getting back to normal as quickly as possible and calls for intensive coordination, communication, reaction, and monitoring. The "After" stage addresses damage assessment and future prevention, and involves anticipation, continued communication, analysis, learning from the mistakes and refocus.
T. Denny Sanford Donates $30m to San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine
The San Diego Consortium for Regenerative has received a $30 million donation from T. Denny Sanford of South Dakota. In recognition of the donation, the Consortium is now known as the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. The funds provided by Sanford, combined with a $43 million major facilities grant awarded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) earlier this year, will be used to build and equip a facility where scientists from the Consortium's four member institutions can collaborate on world-class stem cell research.
"The fact that Denny Sanford chose to make such a substantial donation to the Sanford Consortium speaks volumes about the quality research that scientists from our four member institutions bring to the table," said Edward Holmes, M.D., the Sanford Consortium's President and CEO. "This facility will allow for faster and smarter research to take place by providing a venue for collaboration."
The Sanford Consortium will be one of seven new stem cell research Institutes funded by CIRM to help build California's global leadership in stem cell research and to accelerate the field as a whole. A philanthropist from Sioux Falls, S.D., T. Denny Sanford is a philanthropist who donates significantly to health and science ventures. Through his own giving and the Denny Sanford Foundation, his charitable donations include $400 million to Sioux Valley Hospitals and Health Systems, now Sanford Health; $70 million to the state of South Dakota for the Sanford Science Center; and $20 million to the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in San Diego for the Sanford Children's Health Research Center. Sanford has been listed on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of top donors and BusinessWeek's "50 Most Generous Philanthropists" list.
Formed in 2005, the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine is a nonprofit organization that marshals the intellectual resources of four world-leaders in life sciences research: the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Scripps Research Institute and the University of California, San Diego. Using the collective strength of its members, the Consortium's research program is focused on developing tools and technologies to hasten the pace of stem cell research progress and to discover and develop diagnostics, therapies and cures to relieve human suffering from chronic disease and injury. The Consortium was originally assembled as the San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, but renamed in September 2008 after a naming donation from T. Denny Sanford.
UCSD and UAB Land $4.2m Kidney Research Grant from NIH
The University of California, San Diego is partnering with The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to develop new methods to treat and prevent kidney failure. UAB's Division of Nephrology has been awarded a five-year, $4.23 million George M. O'Brien Kidney Research Center grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). UC San Diego will receive approximately $400,000 each year. Together, UC San Diego and UAB will form one of only eight O'Brien centers in the United States.
"The award of an O'Brien Kidney Center and having UCSD/UAB receive the best score in this round of awards is a tremendous honor for these institutions," said Ravindra Mehta, M.D., F.A.C.P., professor of clinical medicine, Division of Nephrology, Associate Chair for Clinical Research, Department of Medicine, and Associate Director, General Clinical Research Center, UCSD Medical Center. "This designates UCSD/UAB as leading universities in kidney research in the United States."
Acute kidney injury (AKI), or acute kidney failure, is a rapid loss of renal function due to damage to the kidneys. AKI develops in five to seven percent of hospitalized medical-surgical patients and complicates the recovery of 15 to 25 percent of intensive care patients, particularly those with severe infections or sepsis. Even minor decrements in kidney function have been associated with a four to five fold increased risk of mortality in over 50 percent, an increased length of stay, and significantly higher hospital costs. Episodes of AKI may also increase the likelihood of progressive chronic kidney disease and are more likely to occur in patients with pre-existing chronic kidney disease.
The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) established the George M. O'Brien Research Centers Program to improve efficiency and increase collaborative efforts among groups of investigators at institutions with established comprehensive kidney research bases.
UC San Diego will use this grant to cooperate with campus investigators, affiliated biotech institutions, and other recognized nephrologists and clinicians in the San Diego area. They also emphasized that the UCSD/UAB Kidney Center is the only center with a major clinical core directed toward research in human patients and not just experimental animal or cell culture studies. Additionally, this center will further facilitate the activities of the Acute Kidney Injury Network (AKIN) (url: www.akinet.org), a multidisciplinary group co-founded through efforts from Mehta and an international group of investigators. AKIN is focused on improving outcomes from AKI by facilitating international research efforts, which will be enhanced through the O'Brien Center.
The O'Brien Center also will include a pilot research grant program to emphasize innovation, translation, and career development of highly promising junior investigators.
Additional O'Brien Center winners include: University of Pittsburgh, Vanderbilt, Yale, and University of Michigan.
Salk Investigator Receives $1.5m NIH Award
Salk researcher Dr. Lei Wang has been named a 2008 recipient of the National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award. He joins a group of young scientists who will receive a portion of more than $138 million in support of innovative approaches to biomedical research.
Dr. Wang, assistant professor in the Chemical Biology and Proteomics Laboratory, will receive $1.5 million over the next five years to fund research that will design and incorporate novel amino acids in roundworms, a widely used model organism that's easy to raise in the lab, to study how a class of proteins transmits signals regulating development and cancer. A total of 31 scientists from scientific institutes across the country received the honor this year.
The New Innovator Award supports early career investigators with high-impact research interests. Today's announcement was made in conjunction with a second NIH award, the Pioneer Award, which went to 16 researchers who will each receive $2.5 million over five years. Both awards are part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, a series of initiatives designed to address fundamental knowledge gaps in science.
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to fundamental discoveries in the life sciences, the improvement of human health and the training of future generations of researchers. Jonas Salk, M.D., whose polio vaccine all but eradicated the crippling disease poliomyelitis in 1955, opened the Institute in 1965 with a gift of land from the City of San Diego and the financial support of the March of Dimes.
Scripps Launches World's First Dedicated HIV Neutralizing Antibody Center
The Scripps Research Institute, one of the world's largest independent, non-profit biomedical research organizations, and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the world's only global non-profit organization focused solely on AIDS vaccine development, today announced the establishment of a new research center dedicated exclusively to solving the most pressing challenge facing AIDS vaccine researchers today. Located at The Scripps Research Institute and linked to a network of research institutions in Africa, Asia, Europe and the U.S., the Center will develop vaccine candidates devised to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV, which are almost certainly essential to preventing infection by the virus.
Under a five-year supplemental agreement extending the existing collaboration between IAVI and Scripps Research, IAVI will invest $30 million to support the creation of the world's only HIV Neutralizing Antibody Center comprised of multidisciplinary scientific teams, including IAVI scientists, focused on designing vaccines to prevent HIV infection. The first brick-and-mortar institution of its kind, the center at Scripps Research will bring together a critical mass of structural biologists, virologists, chemists, immunologists and computational biologists who will work daily side-by-side to tease out how to generate broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV.
This new center will link to an expanded international scientific Consortium, which was created and is currently project managed by IAVI and known as the Neutralizing Antibody Consortium or NAC. The Center and broader NAC will collaborate closely with many levels of IAVI's research program. For example, leading concepts identified by the NAC scientists will be rapidly translated into clinical candidates for human testing at IAVI's AIDS Vaccine Development Laboratory in New York.
TSRI Study Shows New Ways of Combating Disesase
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered that a single small molecule may be effective in treating multiple protein-folding diseases, breaking the one drug-one disease approach that has guided the pharmaceutical and biotechnological industries for so many years.
In the new paper, the scientists describe how they were able to restore folding, trafficking, and function to mutant enzymes within cells from patients with two well-known lysosomal storage diseases, specifically Tay-Sachs and Gaucher disease. The scientists accomplished this feat by focusing on the protein maintenance machinery of the cell, enhancing it to fold these mutated enzymes that would otherwise have misfolded and been degraded leading to so-called loss-of-function diseases.
The study was published in the September 5, 2008 edition (Volume 134, Issue 5) of the journal Cell.
Scripps Research Team Reverses Huntington's Disease Symptoms in Mice
There is no cure for Huntington's disease, or even treatments that can reverse or slow progression of the devastating movement deficits and cognitive dysfunction that occur with the condition. But, now, an agent developed by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute has shown dramatic therapeutic efficacy in experimental mice, and did so with minimal toxicity.
In the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) during the week of September 15, 2008, the team describes how the inhibitor, HDACi 4b, dramatically improved the physical appearance and motor functioning of Huntington's disease transgenic mice, and retarded their loss of body weight and reduction of brain size.
"The benefit seen was surprising, and immensely exciting, because it suggests this compound could form the basis of a truly relevant therapeutic treatment for Huntington's disease," says the study's lead author, Elizabeth A. Thomas, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Scripps Research Department of Molecular Biology. "The mice that were destined to develop Huntington's disease receiving the treatment did significantly better than the mice who didn't receive the drug."
LIAI launches new division to look at heart disease
While cholesterol-lowering drugs and new technologies have significantly advanced the nation's battle against heart disease, it continues to rank as the No. 1 killer of U.S. men and women. But if researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology (LIAI) have their way, the body's immune system will become an important player in reducing heart disease.
"The statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs) have taken a big chunk out of the numbers of people who suffer from heart disease and heart attacks," said Klaus Ley, M.D., director of the Institute's recently launched Inflammation Biology Division. "We hope we can bite off another chunk by controlling the impact of inflammation-causing immune cells on the artery wall."
Mitchell Kronenberg, Ph.D., LIAI president & scientific director, said the Institute recruited Dr. Ley, one of the leading research experts in the field, to head the new division. "We are excited to have a scientist of Dr. Ley's stature lead our new Inflammation Biology Division," he said. "Its creation puts us in a very select group of immunology institutions worldwide that are exploring new ways of fighting heart disease using the immense power of the immune system."
Founded in 1988, the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology is a nonprofit medical research center dedicated to increasing knowledge and improving human health through studies of the immune system. Scientists at the institute carry out research searching for cures for cancer, allergy and asthma, infectious diseases, and autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and arthritis. LIAI's research staff includes more than 100 Ph.Ds.
Dr. Laura Shawver Establishes The Clearity Foundation
As a researcher in the war on cancer for over 20 years, Dr. Laura Shawver is an expert in the disease and its many manifestations. She studied the science of cancer, a variety of drugs and their ability to eradicate the disease, and she even helped commercialize a new drug for extremely hard to treat kidney and stomach cancers. In 2006 she was stunned to be diagnosed with ovarian cancer. To add to her dismay, she quickly learned that the scientific innovations that were being applied to improve the treatment of other cancers were not benefiting patients with ovarian cancer. In fact, little has changed in over forty years for women with ovarian tumors. She founded The Clearity Foundation in order to change the status quo of ovarian cancer treatment and bring innovative science to patients fighting the disease.
The Clearity Foundation offers diagnostic services that profile patients’ tumors. With this additional information, a patient can work with her medical team to customize her treatment and match her cancer to a drug combination that has the best chance to work for her.
The Clearity Foundation’s model differs from other patient advocacy organizations that focus on disease awareness, early detection and education. It is the only non-profit organization focused on offering molecular profiling to ovarian cancer patients. The foundation provides access to qualified laboratories that conduct the tumor analysis and pays for the tests to be performed if the patient’s insurance does not cover the costs.
Although the standard drug cocktail for ovarian cancer patients is initially effective, most advanced ovarian cancers will relapse and will not respond to chemotherapy the second time around. For these patients, only 30% have a chance of a five-year survival. However, molecular profiling may reveal alternative treatments for ovarian cancers that recur, whether using FDA-approved drugs or investigational medicines currently in clinical trials. It is quickly becoming standard knowledge among oncologists that every tumor is unique and that a one-size-fits-all approach to cancer treatment is no longer viable.