Ambit Files for IPO, Arena Pharmaceuticals Says Weight-Loss Drug on Track, ESRI Launches Medical Place History Map App, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

New money and new product innovations seemed to be the intertwining themes of San Diego’s life sciences news over the past week. See if you agree.

—San Diego’s Ambit Biosciences intends to raise as much as $86.3 million in an IPO, according to a regulatory filing last week. Ambit, which has been developing a drug to treat acute myeloid leukemia, hopes to ride on the coattails of 18 initial public offerings in October, the most in years.

—Bill Davenhall, ESRI‘s global marketing manager for health and human services, talked with me about his 2009 TEDMED talk about the importance of creating a medical place history. One year later, ESRI developed a way to create your own medical place history—an app that is now available for free at the Apple iStore.

—San Diego’s Arena Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ARNA]]) said initial results from an additional test of its experimental diet pill show that the drug meets federal requirements for prescription weight-loss treatments. The study essentially showed that overweight patients who also have Type 2 diabetes reached all three goals of a clinical trial. Arena will now take this information to its next meeting with the FDA, in hopes that it can persuade regulators to approve the drug for sale. The drug’s initial application was turned down last month.

—San Diego-based Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:OPTR]]) said it halted a study of an experimental antibiotic for traveler’s diarrhea, after a higher-than-expected rate of skin rashes. Optimer said the drug candidate is in a class of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones, which are known to sometimes cause rashes.

—The non-profit West Wireless Health Institute said it has developed its first engineering prototype-a wireless fetal and maternal monitoring device called “Sense4Baby.”

—Shareholders of San Diego’s Ligand Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LGND]]) didn’t show much reaction after the company said its board approved a 1-for-6 reverse stock split, which is expected to take effect by the end of this month.

—Federal grants to fund therapeutic discoveries under the Affordable Care Act began arriving at nearly 3,000 biotechs across the country over the past week. Keith Darce at The San Diego Union-Tribune published a complete list of 184 biotechs in San Diego County that are getting a total of almost $67.1 million. The biggest beneficiary is Ligand Pharmaceuticals, which is getting a $1.9 million grant.

—Thoratec (NASDAQ: [[ticker:THOR]]) of Pleasanton, CA, sold its International Technidyne Corp. subsidiary for $55 million to the private equity firm Warburg Pincus, which merged it with San Diego’s Nexus Dx. The San Diego startup is focused on point of care blood diagnostic testing.

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.