SD Life Sciences Roundup: Illumina, Sophiris Bio, & New Funding Deals

a recent regulatory filing. CalciMedica, which Luke profiled in 2010, has been advancing a drug to treat psoriasis. CalciMedica’s investors include Biogen Idec, Sanderling Ventures and SR One.

—San Diego’s Huya Bioscience raised $7.6 million of a planned $18 million in debt and equity, according to a recent regulatory filing. Founding CEO Mireille Gingras told me in 2009 that Huya is obtaining licenses for Chinese compounds, including pre-clinical and clinical drug candidates in oncology, neurology, immunology, and hematology.

—San Diego-based Ridge Diagnostics, founded in 2006 as Precision Human Biolaboratory, has raised $6 million in equity, debt, and securities, according to a recent regulatory filing. Using a proprietary biomarker library and related technology, Ridge has developed multi-variant assays to diagnose Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and other neuropsychiatric disorders—and to guide doctors in selecting anti-depressants and in monitoring and managing their patients.

—Sonexa Therapeutics, a San Diego startup founded in 2008 to develop new drug treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, has raised slightly more than $1.2 million in debt, rights to acquire securities, and securities, according to a regulatory filing. The company’s investors include Domain Associates (Domain partner Eckard Weber is Sonexa’s CEO), Alta Partners, and Scale Venture Partners.

—San Diego’s Axikin Pharmaceuticals, has raised $2 million of a planned $11 million in equity, rights, and securities, according to a recent regulatory filing. Axikin was spun out of Actimis Pharmaceuticals to develop small molecule drugs to treat respiratory disorders such as asthma, allergic rhinitis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Investors include Mitsui Ventures and Sanderling Ventures.

—Carlsbad, CA-based Obalon Therapeutics raised $1.5 million in debt and rights to acquire securities, according to a recent regulatory filing. The medical device developer has maintained a low profile since it was founded in 2008. Obalon appears to have no website and provides little information about its development of a “gastric space occupying device” for treating obesity. Investors include Domain Associates, Okapi Ventures and Phagia Technology.

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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.