Carl Icahn Nominates Scripps Researcher to Biogen Idec Board, BrainCells Pursues New Drug Combo for Depression, Illumina Adds to Oxford Nanopore Investment, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

Oxford Nanopore as part of a deal to sell Oxford’s DNA sequencing machines when they’re ready for market.

—Waltham, MA-based Syndax Pharmaceuticals, which is developing anti-tumor drugs based on the scientific research of the Salk Institute’s Ron Evans, has raised $9 million of a targeted $16 million round, according to a recent SEC filing. The offering comprises equity, options, and warrants, according to the filing. Syndax, which was founded in 2005, raised $40 million in 2007.

—Billionaire investor Carl Icahn and his affiliated investment firms have filed the paperwork needed to nominate three people to the board of Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:[[ticker:BIIB]]), the Cambridge, MA-based biotech that maintains a significant presence in San Diego. Icahn has nominated Thomas Deuel, a former board member at Imclone and a cancer researcher at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. Also nominated is MIT biologist Richard Young and Eric Rowinsky, the former chief medical officer at Imclone.

—Just in time for next week’s Bio-Based Chemicals Summit in San Diego, Allylix has raised $6 million in new equity capital, according to a recent filing with the SEC. San Diego-based Allyx, which was founded in 2002, uses genetically engineered yeast to develop specialty products based on terpenes, which are produced in minute quantities in green plants.

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.