FDA Adopts New Initiative, Scripps Health Begins Longevity Study, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

treat epilepsy and depression.

—DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, awarded a $6.8 million contract to San Diego’s Aethlon Medical to advance technology that could be used to reduce the incidence of sepsis, a potentially fatal bloodstream infection. Aethlon has been developing dialysis-like blood purification equipment.

—Carlsbad, CA-based Life Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LIFE]]) CEO Greg Lucier visited the company’s plant in Renfrewshire, Scotland, earlier this month to tell managers there that Life is considering building a factory there. Renfrewshire is vying with prospective sites in the United States and China for a Life plant that would be in the tens of millions of dollars, according to a BBC report.

—San Diego-based CalciMedica has raised a $4 million round of debt, options, warrants and rights, according to a report in VentureWire. CalciMedica, which is developing a drug for treating plaque psoriasis, closed on a $6 million financing tranche earlier this year from.

—San Diego-based Neurocrine Biosciences (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NBIX]]) said it received a $20 million milestone payment from Abbott. The two companies are collaborating in the development of a new drug for treating endometriosis, and Neurocrine indicated it is ready to begin late-stage trials.

—Square 1 Bank, based in Durham, NC, said it provided a $6 million loan to San Diego-based CoDa Therapeutics, which is developing drugs for wounds that heal poorly, including venous leg and diabetic foot ulcers. The company arranged the financing after closing on a $19 million funding round in April.

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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.