San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: BeneChill, Sotera, Imthera, & More

market the drug in Europe under a partnership agreement that paid Optimer $68 million upfront. The FDA cleared fidaxomicin for treatment of C. difficile in the U.S. earlier this year.

—San Diego’s Imthera Medical, which has been developing an implantable medical device for treating obstructive sleep apnea, has raised about $1.5 million in financing from Richmond, VA-based Allied Beacon Partners, according to a recent regulatory filing. The financing includes a combination of equity, options to acquire securities, and securities. Houston’s Cyberonics invested $4 million in Imthera several months ago.

—Connect gave its most prestigious honor, the William W. Otterson Award for innovation, to San Diego’s Gen-Probe (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GPRO]] for its Procleix test, which has been used in the U.S. since 2002 to test samples of donated blood for HIV and hepatitis.

—Connect gave a most innovative new product award (for diagnostics and medical technologies) to Life Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LIFE]]) for the Ion Personal Genome Machine (PGM), a bench-top system for gene sequencing. In another life sciences category, Connect gave one of its annual innovative product awards to Hypnoz Therapeutic Devices for its Jaw Elevation Device, which helps an anesthesia provider keep a patient’s airway open.

—Fate Therapeutics named former Idec Pharmaceuticals CEO Bill Rastetter as chairman and interim CEO. Rastetter wears many hats, but he told Luke his new job at Fate would become his major time commitment. John Mendelin, who was Fate’s executive chairman, moved to vice-chairman, and will oversee “scientific excellence.”

—Cambridge, MA-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which has operations in San Diego, named Jeff Leiden as CEO, replacing Matt Emmens as of Feb. 1. Vertex is confronting tough new competition with its flagship hepatitis C drug, and is preparing to launch a second new drug for cystic fibrosis.

—In his BioBeat column, Luke talked with San Diego’s Kleanthis Xanthopoulos about new competition that has been roiling the scene for hepatitis C drug developers. Xanthopoulos, the Regulus Therapeutics CEO and co-founder of hepatitis drug concern Anadys Pharmaceuticals, said it’s going to take some time before a clear leader emerges.

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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.