Arena Prepares to Release Big Obesity Study, Minnow Medical Goes Into ‘Commercialization Mode,’ Metabasis Hires Strategic Adviser, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

Arena Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ARNA]]) plans to announce results of a 4,000-patient clinical trial of its obesity drug lorcaserin this month. But Northern California rival Vivus (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VVUS]]) announced results of its own obesity drug first. Get the skinny on all this and the rest of San Diego’s life sciences news.

—San Diego’s Arena Pharmaceuticals is set to release the results of a major study that was designed to see whether a high or low dose of its experimental drug lorcaserin can help patients lose weight. As Luke reported, Arena has a lot riding on the outcome. The company has raised almost $1 billion and spent 12 years developing its drug.

—Meanwhile, Mountain View, CA-based Vivus set high expectations yesterday when it reported that a high dose of its drug, which is a combination of phentermine and topiramate, helped patients lose an average of more than 10 percent of their body weight.

—After six years of development, San Diego’s Minnow Medical is working to commercialize technology that founding CEO Tom Steinke describes as an exciting advance in balloon catheters, which are used in angioplasty. After raising $22 million and expanding Minnow Medical to 28 employees, Steinke is seeking additional capital from prospective investors.

—Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme (NASDAQ: [[ticker: GENZ]]) paid $7 million to acquire a lot of patents and proprietary know-how in gene therapy from Seattle’s Targeted Genetics (NASDAQ: [[TICKER:GENZ]]). Targeted Genetics delivered the intellectual property earlier this week to San Diego, where Genyzme operates a gene therapy facility.

—San Diego’s Metabasis Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker: MBRX]]) said it has received a Nasdaq delisting notice, which may be the least of its worries. The ailing biotech said last week it hired a financial firm to evaluate its strategic options. Metabasis also announced the resignation of Mark Erion, the company’s CEO, chief scientific officer, and director. Chairman David Hale is overseeing what appears to be the company’s end game.

—San Diego’s Anadys Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker: ANDS]]) said it has started a mid-stage clinical trial of its lead drug candidate for patients with hepatitis C. The company said results of the experiment should be available by year-end, with more follow-up data to come in 2010.

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.