TEDMED Walking, FDA Clears Pacira Drug, Zogenix Close to NDA, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

coming era of translational medicine, in which drugs home in on biologically distinct malignancies.

—Zogenix CEO Roger Hawley told me the San Diego company plans to submit a new drug application (NDA) in early 2012 for its extended-release formulation of the painkilling drug hydrocodone bitartrate (Zohydro). Zogenix estimates that more than 128 million prescriptions are written in the U.S. each year for hydrocodone drugs, a potential $7.5 billion market opportunity. The company said attaining just 1 percent of that market would generate an estimated $248 million a year.

—San Diego’s Intellikine said it earned $4 million in milestone payments from Cambridge, MA-based Infinity Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:INFI]]). Intellikine has been developing small-molecule drugs that target a key cellular signaling pathway controlled by a group of kinase enzymes known as PI3K. Intellikine licensed rights for IPI-145, a compound that blocks two of the four known variations of PI3K, to Infinity in mid-2010. As part of the deal, Infinity agreed to pay $4 million with the initiation of two early stage trials of IPI-145.

—San Diego-based Illumina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ILMN]]) and Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics (NYSE: [[ticker:SI]]) of Tarrytown, NY, have formed a partnership to set new standards for next-generation genome sequencing of infectious microbes in patients. By making Siemens molecular HIV tests compatible with Illumina’s next generation MiSeq DNA sequencing system, the companies said they plan to offer a variety of new diagnostic assays for infectious diseases.

—Driven by sales of its new FDA-approved drug for treating hepatitis C, Cambridge, MA-based Vertex (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VRTX]]) posted its first quarterly profit based on its own product sales. Vertex said sales of telaprevir helped the company generate $659 million in total revenues, and turn a profit of $221 million ($1.02 a share) in the third quarter that ended Sept. 30. The company maintains some operations in San Diego.

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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.