SD Life Sciences Roundup: Takeda Consolidates, Startups Raise Cash

Image licensed by Depositphotos.com/Christian Delbert.

It’s been a busy week for startup funding, with Obalon Therapeutics, Aperio Technologies, Topera, and Ivera Medical closing on financing deals. We’ve also got drug development news from Ocera Therapeutics and MediciNova.

—Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical said it’s closing its center of excellence in South San Francisco, which has been focused on developing early stage antibody drugs, and consolidating its operations, now known as Takeda California, in San Diego. The company’s San Diego center of excellence, which is focused on structure-based drug discovery, has about 170 employees, according to a report by Gary Robbins of U-T San Diego. Keith Wilson, president and chief science officer of Takeda California, told the U-T that Takeda plans to add about 30 positions in San Diego by the end of the year.

—San Diego-based Qualcomm’s wireless health subsidiary, Qualcomm Life, named 25 members to an advisory council to help the business address key industry issues. The list includes Kleiner Perkins partner Brook Byers, X Prize founder Peter Diamandis, inventor Dean Kamen, Diego Miralles of Janssen Healthcare Innovation, Eric Topol of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, Psilos Ventures partner Lisa Suennen, and Larry Smarr, founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications & Information Technology (Calit2).

—San Diego’s MediciNova (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MNOV]]) said its experimental asthma drug failed to meet the main goal of a second mid-stage trial. The drug developer said patients treated with its leading drug candidate, bedoradrine sulfate, showed significant improvement in other ways, but a sell off on Wall Street sent shares of MediciNova down by

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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.