San Diego’s Tandem Diabetes Raises $12 Million While Insulin Pump Is Under Review

Tandem Diabetes Care, a San Diego medical device maker founded in 2008, has raised $12 million of a financing round that could eventually total nearly $13.7 million, according to a recent regulatory filing. The company has applied to the FDA for clearance for its insulin pump, according to VentureWire.

The company’s website says its wearable insulin pump is an alternative for people with type 1 diabetes who have difficulty managing their diabetes on multiple daily injections. The device features touchscreen controls and a graphical user interface, and can be connected via a USB port to a Web application the company has developed to upload as much as 90 days of insulin pump data or blood glucose meter data.

Tandem Diabetes applied for 510(k) clearance from the FDA, VentureWire reports, meaning it believes its insulin pump is similar to other devices already on the market.

Indeed, as Luke reported last year, the company faces a market with many established insulin pump makers, including Minneapolis-based Medtronic; Bedford, MA-based Insulet; Switzerland’s Roche; New Brunswick, NJ-based Johnson & Johnson; South Korea’s Sooil; and Japan’s Nipro.

The $13.7 million offering described in the new filing is a combination of equity, debt, and options. In January, 2010, Tandem raised $52.3 million from investors that include Delphi Ventures, Domain Associates, HLM Venture Partners, Second Technology Capital Investors and TPG Biotech.

Tandem’s board of directors includes CEO Kim Blickenstaff, who joined the company in 2007, after Inverness Medical Innovations acquired his previous company, San Diego-based Biosite, for $1.8 billion; Amylin Pharmaceuticals founder Howard “Ted” Greene; Dick Allen, a prominent startup investor; John Livingston, a former executive with MiniMed; Tandem founder Paul DiPerna; Jesse Treu of Domain Associates; Keith Grossman of TPG Biotech; Doug Roeder of Delphi Ventures; and Ed Cahill of HLM Venture Partners.

An estimated 23.6 million people in the United States have diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. Type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile-onset diabetes, occurs when the body loses insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

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.