FDA Rejects Orexigen’s Weight-Loss Drug, Arena Lays Off 66, ResMed CEO Jumps to CareFusion, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

the CEO of San Diego-based ResMed (NYSE: [[ticker:RMD]]) to take a job across town as the chairman and CEO of San Diego’s CareFusion (NYSE: [[ticker:CFN]]). Gallahue, 47, replaced former CareFusion chairman and CEO David Schlotterbeck, who is retiring. Meanwhile ResMed founder and executive chairman Peter Farrell is resuming his CEO duties there.

—I profiled Vista, CA-based Fluorotronics, which has developed pulsed-laser technology that it says identifies the unique spectral signature of carbon-fluorine bonds rapidly, accurately, and at low cost. Founding CEO Olga Sharts said the company is initially targeting the pharmaceuticals industry, where fluorine-labeled molecules make the technology ideally suited for both drug discovery and quality assurance.

—San Diego’s Ligand Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LGND]]) acquired CyDex Pharmaceuticals for more than $36 million in mostly borrowed cash.

—San Diego-based drug developer Meritage Pharma raised $2 million from investors in a financing round that is expected to total $5.5 million. The company is focused on developing a treatment for eosinophlic esophagitis, in which an allergic reaction causes a person’s esophagus to swell.

—Cambridge, MA-based Vertex (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VRTX]]), which has operations in San Diego, joined with other drug makers to support studies that are intended to encourage the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to routinely screen for hepatitis C. If that happens, an additional 1 million people who don’t realize they have hepatitis C could turn to Vertex’s new hepatitis C drug.


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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.