Xconomy San Diego Hosts its Premiere Event, A Regional Algae Initiative Blooms, Mpex Pharmaceuticals Raises $27.5M, La Jolla Pharmaceuticals Fails Key Trial, & More San Diego BizTech News

up an accumulated deficit of $656 million, is approaching the moment of truth in experimental trials of its new weight-loss drug.

—After reporting the failure of its lead drug candidate, Riquent, in a clinical trial, the big question facing La Jolla Pharmaceutical (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LJPC]]) is whether the biotech will cease operations. The Riquent news wiped out more than 90 percent of the San Diego-based biotech’s stock market value, although the company could possibly resurrect another drug candidate that was shelved to conserve cash.

—Mobile TV is expected to become a $50 billion global market by 2013, with as many as 500 million people tuning in to watch television programming on mobile devices. But a study released by ABI Research of New York indicates the U.S. market won’t be part of any mobile TV boom because of confusion and uncertainty. That could be bad news for Qualcomm’s MediaFlo technology.

—A new drug called degarelix, developed to treat prostate cancer, is expected to enter the U.S. market by the end of next month. The peptide is the first “new chemical entity” discovered in San Diego by the Ferring Research Institute, a research center established by Switerland’s Ferring Pharmaceuticals.

—San Diego government contractor SAIC (NYSE: [[ticker:SAI]]) says its Benham Companies subsidiary is now qualified to bid on Energy Savings Performance Contract projects. With the Department of Energy’s approval of all contract options over the next seven years, Benham will be allowed to seek as much as $5 billion in such projects.

—Semiconductor industry bellwether Cymer says it expects orders for its specialized lasers, which are used to create microcircuitry patterns in silicon wafers, to continue to decline through March. The San Diego-based company (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CYMI]]) supplies 65 percent of the laser equipment used worldwide to make integrated circuits.

—San Diego software security company Websense (NASDAQ: [[ticker:WBSN]]) has acquired four companies since former McAfee executive Gene Hodges was named CEO, expanding the scope of its capabilities to identify and block computer viruses and malicious software code. The most recent acquisition was less than three two weeks ago.

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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.