Illumina Rides Business Surge, IntegenX Acquires GenValult, Orexigen Cuts Payroll, & More San Diego Life Science News

There was good news and bad news from San Diego’s life sciences community over the past week. Here’s our recap for you.

—San Diego-based Illumina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ILMN]]) said it shipped a record number of DNA mapping systems during the fourth quarter that ended Jan. 2. With demand for its genetic equipment soaring, Illumina said its profit was three times the same quarter last year. Illumina also disclosed plans to relocate its 1,100 San Diego employees to the San Diego campus of Biogen Idec, the Cambridge, MA-based company that is pulling up stakes in San Diego.

—IntegenX of Pleasanton, CA, acquired Carlsbad, CA-based GenVault for an undisclosed amount, and raised $15.6 million in new capital in a round led by existing investor Domain Associates. IntegenX makes automated sample preparation systems for genetics laboratories. GenVault produces bio-sample storage systems that do not depend on refrigeration.

—Orexigen Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:OREX]]) eliminated 23 jobs, or about 40 percent of its workforce, after the FDA rejected the company’s request to sell the obesity drug Contrave in the United States. Orexigen said it expects the cuts will save $5 million a year.

—San Diego-based Leading Ventures‘ co-founder and senior managing director John Rodenrys took me to the living tissue laboratory of UC San Diego bioengineering professor Geert Schmid-Schönbein to better explain the firm’s venture funding strategy. Leading Ventures is providing funding for two startups based on technologies developed in Schmid-Schönbein’s lab.

—San Diego-based Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:OPTR]]) disclosed a deal with Japan’s Astellas Pharma that gives Astellas exclusive rights to market its treatment for C. difficile infections in Europe, and certain countries in the Middle East, Africa, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Optimer filed for FDA approval of the drug fidaxomicin in late November.

—Physio-Control of Redmond, WA, and BeneChill of San Diego formed a strategic partnership to sell a portable system that BeneChill developed for use by emergency medical technicians that chills the brains of people who have suffered a stroke, heart attack, or traumatic brain injury. The new partners plan to start marketing the RhinoChill System in Europe this quarter.

—San Diego-based Altair Therapeutics shut down after the startup’s lone drug candidate for asthma failed in a mid-stage clinical trial. Altair was a spinoff from Carlsbad, CA-based Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ISIS]]), which has re-acquired Altair’s assets, blocked further clinical development, and dissolved Altair.

—San Diego’s Genomatica, which is developing sustainable chemicals technology, signed a strategic agreement with Houston’s Waste Management to develop ways of making basic chemicals from landfill gas and other sources.

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.