Obama’s Stem Cell Reversal Sparks Deals, Qualcomm’s MediaFLO Revealed, Nokia’s Wireless Mapping, & More SD BizTech News

President Obama’s reversal of federal funding restrictions on research using embryonic stem cells prompted some interesting commentary last week, along with some related developments among local startups. We also have news about the expanding world of mobile media and wireless mapping technologies, so read on!

—No one is expecting immediate and widespread changes after the Obama Administration re-opened the door to federal funding for stem cell research, but some Xconomists say it represents an important new opportunity.

—One of the most perceptive commentaries I’ve read about the shift came from Seattle Xconomist Randall Moon, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Washington, and a co-founder of Fate Therapeutics.

—San Diego’s Fate Therapeutics, which is developing drugs to spur stem cells into action, said last week it has recruited a couple of renowned scientific leaders to its roster. The company named Ken Batchelor, a former senior research executive at drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: [[ticker:GSK]]), as its chief scientific officer and Dan Shoemaker, previously chief scientific officer at San Diego-based ICx Biosystems to be its chief technology officer.

—Amid the burst of stem cell news, the timing also was ideal for Stemgent to announce it has raised $14 million in venture funding. The startup based in Cambridge, MA, and San Diego specializes in providing reagents and other materials for stem cell research labs.

—We also had a spate of news on the wireless front. After touring the San Diego-based network operations center of Qualcomm’s MediaFLO mobile TV service, I was impressed with MediaFLO’s ability to provide live news and sports coverage. It would be interesting to see what might happen if Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]) MediaFLO could broadcast an extended sporting event—say all the games of the NCAA’s college basketball tournament.

—At the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, CA, the Finnish mobile communications giant is amassing a vast database of information about the comings and goings of cell phone users. This could prove important as Nokia and San Diego’s Qualcomm move forward

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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.