$1.3 million venture round. The startup’s second focus is to develop stem cell therapies for animals that suffer from acute and chronic diseases.
—San Diego-based MabVax Therapeutics, which is developing new vaccines and human antibodies to treat cancer, raised about $500,000 and intends to raise an additional $3.5 million.
—Palkion, a San Diego-based biotech startup, hopes to develop an oral drug that will provide a slow, steady increase in red blood cell levels for patients with anemia. As Luke reported, the company hopes to stake a claim in the $11.5 billion worldwide market for anemic patients.
—Carlsbad, CA-based Life Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LIFE]]) says it’s selling its mass spectrometry business, used in molecular analysis, to Washington, D.C.-based Danaher (NYSE: [[ticker:DHR]]) for $450 million in cash. Life, which was formed last year in the merger of Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems, is focusing on selling biotechnology-related tools with higher profit margins.
—San Diego-based Orexigen Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:OREX]]), which is developing an obesity drug, has looked like a different company since former Amgen vice president Mike Narachi took over as CEO in March. Luke reports that Orexigen has strengthened its financials, added more depth to its bench in management, and issued a comprehensive report on the results of its clinical trials results.
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.
View all posts by Bruce V. Bigelow