Deals and Data
Aaah, August. The dog days of summer. The water is finally warm, everyone in New York is off in the Hamptons, the kids are at camp and all the Californians are at the beach, as everyone takes a post-BIO, pre-school year breather. No one does deals then, right? Well, no one told that to Roche, who made a bold play to buy the rest of biotech giant Genentech, the big biotech they already own 56 percent of.
Not to be outdone, other major players made big moves, with ImClone potentially going to partner Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the rest of the industry playing the big-biotech guessing game of who is next, with local players like Vertex and Amylin part of the collective contemplation, and a recurrence of two cases of complications from Tysabri impacting both Biogen Idec and Elan. It's an exciting time in an exciting industry, so maybe you should bring that copy of the Journal down to the beach today, or just keep an eye on your stocks on your PDA.
Speaking of stocks, shares in Cadence Pharmaceuticals jumped when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the firm wouldn't need to do more major clinical trials to file its injectable pain treatment for approval.
Fresh of the grand opening of their large new UTC building, Illumina bought themselves a new company to go with their new building, buying Redwood City-based Avantome for $25 million in cash and up to $35 million in milestones. Avantome makes low-cost long reading sequencing technology. San Diego's largest biotech by market capitalization, the firm also filed to sell more than $300 million worth of shares.
Looking to jump into the public pool, AutoGenomics filed their S-1 to go public for up to $86.3 million. The company makes a diagnostic platform that looks for disease signatures via genetic and protein markers.
Deciding those public waters are too cool to take a dip, Zogenix has apparently pulled its S-1 to go public and instead has secured an $18 million financing with the Oxford Financing Corp. to prepare launch of its DosePro migraine treatment.
Not far away from the tide pools of La Jolla, Zenobia Therapeutics, officially two months old now, has opened its doors as a fragment-based lead discovery company with some industry veterans. More information is here.
In one of those cross-town rendezvous that's bound to make a biotech blush, International Stem Cell Corp. has partnered with Novocell for them to help differentiate ISC's human stem cells into pancreatic islet cells as a potential diabetes treatment. Always the man about town, Alan Lewis's company was profiled in Voice of San Diego last month.
Santarus signed a promotion agreement with Depomed wherein Santarus will promote Depomed's Glumetza treatment to help deal with some diabetes side effects. Santarus has a sales force dealing with gastrointestinal doctors.
Invirogen signed several deals, including this one with Lentigen Corporation, a privately-held biotechnology company specializing in lentiviral gene delivery technologies, to develop and supply gene over-expression products and services. Invitrogen also licensed a stem cell line from the Buck Institute for Age Research. And just because ComiCon was here last month doesn't mean you'll get a cheap Buck Roger's joke about how Invitrogen will save every one of us.
Ordinarily, no one wants to be an orphan, but Mpex Pharmaceuticals was proud to tell the world that the EMEA had given the firm Orphan Drug Designation for its MP-376 treatment for cystic fibrosis, which is currently in Phase II testing. This news came a month after the firm's big deal with GlaxoSmithKline.
Sequenom, whose shares have been on a tear over projected income from its non-invasive prenatal diagnostic for Down's syndrome, expanded a partnership with SensiGen of Michigan to jointly develop and market tests for kidney disease and lupus.
Cardium Therapeutics was able to complete a private placement of stocks and warrants for $3.3 million. Hollis Eden started a Phase II trial of a new treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.
For those of you keeping score, EpiCept said it received a favorable review, reversing an earlier one, from Europe's EMEA CHMP group on its Ceplene histamine compound for use in leukemia.
Vical took home a $1 million payment from AnGes over its Angiogenesis program. Regulus Therapeutics said it signed a screening deal to have Cenix Bio Science look through Regulus' libraries of microRA modulators to look for lead candidates.
In Orange County, Cortex says it will provide top-line data for its opiate-induced respiratory depression treatment this week.
And from BIOCOM's northernmost member, Berkeley-based Xoma says it started a Phase 2a clinical trial to look at a topic jell to treat impetigo, a common skin ailment, and don't forget to check Brad Fike's biotech blog for the most current