SD Biotech Roundup: Wireless Sensor Prize, Zogenix, Sangart, & More

Image licensed by Depositphotos.com/Christian Delbert.

target patient populations are often small, which makes it hard for private companies to justify the costs of development. As Snyder puts it, there are reasons why the government needs to be involved with these diseases.

—San Diego-based Astute Medical, a diagnostics company focused on community and hospital-acquired acute infections and conditions, has raised $2 million in a combination of convertible loans, warrants, and securities, according to a recent regulatory filing. Astute Medical raised $39.5 million in a Series B financing that included Domain Associates, Delphi Ventures, De Novo Ventures, and Johnson & Johnson Development, according to VentureBeat.

—Cryoport, with offices in San Diego and Lake Forest, CA, raised more than $5.2 million in a combination of equity, rights to acquire securities, and securities, according to a recent regulatory filing. Cryoport provides a liquid nitrogen shipping container and logistics services that enable biomedical research labs and life sciences startups to manage the entire process of shipping biological samples.

—Polynoma, a San Diego biotech developing new cancer therapies, named former Arana Therapeutics CEO John Chiplin as CEO. Polynoma, which is part of Hong Kong-based CK Life Sciences, recently began a late-stage clinical trial of POL 103A, a new vaccine for treating melanoma.

—San Diego’s West Wireless Health Institute named Rodger Currie as senior vice president of government affairs, a new policy position that’s intended to focus on implementing non-partisan solutions to lower health care costs. Currie was previously a partner in the healthcare and government strategies practice groups of the Foley Hoag law firm. Before that, Currie was a senior vice president for Dean Kamen, the renowned inventor and entrepreneur.

—NanoSort CEO Jose Morachis told me his startup just landed a $1 million small business innovation research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health to advance development of a new generation of flow cytometers and cell sorters. With the latest funding, NanoSort has raised a total of $2.4 million for technology that uses innovative optics and a closed microfluidic chip to sort cells at high speed.

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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.