It turns out that Novalar Pharmaceuticals’ decision to sell OraVerse, its dental anesthesia reversal agent, was only half the story.
Novalar CEO Donna Janson tells The San Diego Union-Tribune today that the venture-backed company has no other drug candidates in its pipeline and will soon shut down. The Union-Tribune says the company plans to lay off its remaining 12 employees in coming weeks. The company’s website yesterday included information about another drug that Novalar had licensed in 2007, but that information was not available on Novalar’s website today.
Novalar made no mention of the shutdown in its statement yesterday. Janson was not immediately available for comment by e-mail or telephone this afternoon.
Novalar sold OraVerse to Septodont, a privately owned company based in St. Maur, France, (and not Lancaster, PA, as I reported) for an undisclosed payment “to Novalar and its investors.” In comments to the U-T today, Janson indicates that Septodont’s upfront payment, along with milestone payments and royalties from OraVerse sales, would be going to Novalar’s investors. She told the newspaper that selling OraVerse provided “the most lucrative return for our investors.”
Novalar’s venture investors include Domain Associates, Boston Millennia Partners, Genevest, Montreux Equity Partners, New Enterprise Associates, SR One, and Sears Capital Management.
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.
View all posts by Bruce V. Bigelow