Ramius Buys Cypress Bio, Genoptix Reportedly Exploring Possible Sale, Anaphore Gets Japanese Partner, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

It’s less than 10 days before Christmas, but San Diego’s life sciences community doesn’t seem to be ready for vacation. The business news wires have been crackling with reports of buyouts, rumored buyouts, deals, and major product launches. Fortunately, we’re here to sort it all out for you.

—As corporate courtships go, the unsolicited offer by New York’s Ramius group for San Diego’s Cypress Bioscience (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CYPB]]) was more tempestuous than romantic. But Ramius finally came up with a proposal that swept Cypress off its feet. At $6.50 a share, the hedge fund’s $255 million offer was 63 percent higher than the original proposal of $4 a share five months ago, and about 160 percent higher than Cypress’ share price of $2.50 on July 16, before the Ramius offer became public.

—Is Genoptix (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GXDX]]) negotiating with a secret suitor who wants to buy the Carlsbad, CA, medical diagnostic company? Bloomberg News reported that Genoptix has hired Barclays, the British investment bank, and buyout speculation has been driving the company’s stock higher. Genoptix runs a centralized laboratory that performs tests on blood samples of patients with blood disorders and cancers.

—Another Carlsbad company, Life Technologies, (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LIFE]]) has started selling what it calls the Ion Personal Genome Machine, a molecular diagnostic instrument for sequencing genomes. The first commercial sequencing machine uses semiconductor technology, rather than imaging, to sequence genes, and was developed by Ion Torrent Systems of Guilford, CT. The machine sells for a shade under $50,000, about one-tenth the price of today’s most high-powered gene sequencing instruments.

—San Diego’s Avalon Ventures has put about $1 million in funding to launch RQx Pharmaceuticals, which plans to develop a

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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.