general corporate purposes, which could include buying other companies, acquiring or developing new technologies, and repaying its debts. Quidel CEO Doug Bryant outlined the company’s strategy Tuesday at the J.P. Morgan conference.
—San Diego’s Ligand Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LGND]] said it licensed two of its liver drug candidates to Chiva Pharmaceuticals, a Los Altos Hills, CA-based affiliate of Hainan Kaihua Pharmaceutical. Ligand said the deal, which gives Chiva rights to develop and market the drugs in China, could be worth more than $100 million in milestone payments and royalties.
—San Diego-based Adventrx Pharmaceuticals agreed to acquire an unidentified biotechnology company developing a late-stage drug candidate for treating a painful blockage of blood vessels in people with sickle cell disease. Under terms of the deal, which were non-binding on both companies, Adventrx would give as much as 47 percent of its stock to the target company, providing that the FDA ultimately approves the drug for sale in the United States. The deal could be worth as much as $20.2 million.
—Independa, a San Diego-based startup developing health IT technologies to help the elderly continue to live independently, introduced its “Smart Reminders” service at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Web-based platform combines apps for smart calendaring and medication reminders into a browser-based system managed by caregivers.
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.
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