There was a steady flow of drug development and funding news from San Diego’s life sciences industry over the past week. Here are the highlights.
—Halozyme Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:HALO]]) CFO Kurt Gustafson talked with me about the experimental anti-cellulite drug that company is testing in preclinical studies.
—Connect, a non-profit that supports local technology and entrepreneurship, opened a lobbying office in Washington D.C. to represent San Diego’s innovation community.
—PatientSafe Solutions, formerly IntelliDOT, a company working on technology to prevent errors in hospitals, raised $30 million in a restructuring round of funding.
—An experimental antibiotic from Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:OPTR]]) was equivalent in a clinical trial to mainstay drug vancomycin against C.difficile bacterial infections. The company expects to fil e a new drug application with the FDA later this year.
—Sequenom (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SQMN]])) obtained rights to develop and commercialize a genetic test for late-stage, age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly.
—NexMed (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NEXM]]) raised $2.3 million in promissory notes from two investors for general corporate purposes and to advance its transdermal drug delivery technology.
—Tragara Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on anti-tumor drugs, has raised $5 million of a targeted $10 million venture round.
—Isis Pharmaceuticals of Carlsbad, CA (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ISIS]]) and Cambridge, MA-based partner Genzyme (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GENZ]]) said an experimental drug lowered cholesterol in patients with familial hypercholesterolemia, an inherited disorder that affects 1 in 500 people. Patients in the late-stage study had higher liver enzymes but no liver dysfunction, the companies said.