Abbott Buys Isis’ Diagnostics Subsidiary, Ligand Binds With GlaxoSmithKline, Ardea Raises $30M & More San Diego BizTech News

It was the week before Christmas, and the deals were flying. Could San Diego’s economy be downturn defying? Heed the tech news and be of good cheer! We wish you an Xconomy Xmas and Xponential New Year!

—The big deal of the week came Wednesday, when Abbott Labs (NYSE: [[ticker:ABT]]) exercised its option to acquire Ibis Biosciences from Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ISIS]]) for $215 million—plus continuing payments from sales of Ibis’ diagnostics products.

—San Diego’s Ligand Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LGND]]) also scored with a big pharma partner, GlaxoSmithKline, (NYSE: [[ticker:GSK]]) by awarding exclusive rights to Glaxo for its drug candidate shown recently to effectively boost blood platelet cells. Glaxo agreed to pay $5 million now and as much as $158 million later, not including royalty payments.

—San Diego’s Solera Holdings, which makes software for the auto claims industry, announced it has paid $117.4 million to buy HPI Ltd, a British firm that compiles a data base of used car histories. Solera was founded in 2005 by Tony Aquila, a former president of Mitchell International, a rival auto claims software developer also based in San Diego.

—San Diego’s Huntington Capital raised $78 million in capital commitments for its second fund, which the boutique venture lender launched in May. The firm hopes to raise a total of $100 million for “Fund II” by early next year.

—Privately held Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, NV, completed its buyout of SpaceDev, which is based in the suburban San Diego community of Poway, in a deal estimated at roughly $30 million. SpaceDev said its shareholders approved the deal Monday.

—Ardea Biosciences (NASDAQ: [[ticker: RDEA]]), the San Diego biotech developing small molecule drugs for inflammatory diseases, raised more than $30 million in a private stock placement.

—Pfizer (NYSE: [[ticker:PFE]]), sensing new opportunities in stem cell research for treating diabetes, formed a two-year collaboration with San Diego’s Novocell.

—Serial entrepreneur Michael Robertson, who made his fortune as the founder of MP3.com, launched a new version of Gizmo5 technology at SIPphone. The new technology, GizmoCall.com, enables users to log onto a Web site to make VOIP calls (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and can be used with any computer running a Windows, Macintosh or Linux operating system.

—Finally, the government awarded a couple of noteworthy contracts this week to San Diego’s SAIC, (NYSE: [[ticker:SAI]]) the research and engineering company also known as Science Applications International Corp. The first, from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was for a $14.9 million biofuel contract to develop ways of using algae to make JP-8 grade jet fuel. The second deal, from NASA, could be worth as much as $69 million over the next five years to SAIC for engineering services and support for the Constellation program, which calls for returning astronauts to the moon.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.