Deals & Data
San Diego-based Vical Inc. (Nasdaq: VICL) has been added to the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index, effective when U.S. markets opened November 23, 2009.
Xconomy reports that Receptos, a San Diego-based biotech startup formed by a number of Biogen Idec veterans, has nailed down $25 million in venture capital to develop a vivid new way to look at certain protein structures on cells that it hopes will ultimately take a lot of the guesswork out of drug discovery.
The Scripps Research Institute has appointed Courtney Miller as an assistant professor in the Department of Metabolism and Aging and the Department of Neuroscience on the Scripps Florida campus.
Intrinsic LifeSciences, a company developing industry-leading diagnostic products for iron-related diseases and anemia’s, received notification of award for a NIH Small Business Innovation Research Grant, titled “Serum Hepcidin Immunoassay: Laboratory to Marketplace”. Intrinsic LifeSciences, based in La Jolla, has been a Biocom member since 2007, and developed the first diagnostic test for human hepcidin, the key hormone regulating iron absorption and circulating levels in blood. Mark Westerman, Ph.D., the CEO, announced that the company received $350,000 for the first phase of assay commercialization activities with potential for $1MM over two years for Phase II activities. Hepcidin assays promise to improve the diagnosis of iron deficiency, anemia of inflammation, anemia of renal disease, and iron overload states including hereditary hemochromatosis. Hepcidin analysis may also provide improved therapeutic guidance to physicians for management of these debilitating conditions.
Life Technologies announced that it will sell cancer mutation assays supplied by TrimGen to the research market.
According to the San Diego Daily Transcript, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared one of Gen-Probe Inc.’s latest molecular tests for marketing, the San Diego diagnostics company announced..
El Cajon-based Pure Bioscience has signed an agreement in which Charlotte Products Ltd. will blend and package Pure’s patented silver dihydrogen citrate-based hard surface disinfectant and distribute the disinfectant in Canada and the U.S. through cleaning product manufacturers Swish Maintenance Limited, Swish (USA) and Enviro-Solutions Limited.
Inovio Biomedical Corp. rose more than 25 percent on slightly higher volume after the vaccine developer said its flu vaccine candidates—including one for swine flu—produced antibody responses in ferrets.
The San Diego Business Journal reported that Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., maker of the HIV treatment Lexiva, has made a business of tackling some of the world’s most difficult-to-treat diseases. Next year, the company plans to submit a first-of-its-kind drug candidate to the FDA for treating chronic hepatitis C virus infections in people who have failed standard treatments.
The liver is hot in the biotech world. Cambridge, MA-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals has made headlines this year with an antiviral drug that it hopes will do for hepatitis C—a chronic liver-damaging condition affecting millions of people—what a previous generation of treatments did for HIV. But away from the spotlight, a small San Diego biotech company called Ocera Therapeutics says it has built up some preliminary evidence that it may have an interesting new drug to treat hepatic encephalopathy, a common complication among people with cirrhosis of the liver, Xconomy reports.