San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Life, BioSurplus, Obalon, & More

[Updated 7/10/12 9:25 am. See below.] It seemed as if much of San Diego’s life sciences industry took the past week off, and I plan to join them next week. If you can’t hold your breaking news until I return on July 30, send your bulletins to editors at Xconomy.com.

—Life Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LIFE]]) bought Navigenics, the genetic diagnostics company based in Foster City, CA, giving the Carlsbad, CA-based laboratory instrument manufacturer an entré to the emerging field of clinical genetic testing. Life Technologies did not disclose the value of its Navigenics buyout. The key to the deal is Navigenics’ CLIA-certified lab, which enables Life to offer its lab tests to physicians. (CLIA labs meet standards set by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.)

—[Updated to include announcement from Shire] A spokesman for Shire tells me the pharmaceutical giant has changed the name of San Diego’s Advanced BioHealing to Shire Regenerative Medicine. Shire acquired the company last year and has been operating the business as a subsidiary. The name change follows Shire’s plan to build a regenerative medicine campus in San Diego over the next several years.

—San Diego’s BioSurplus closed on $2.4 million in its first round of outside funding, with Durham, NC-based SJF Ventures accounting for much of the oversubscribed round. BioSurplus provides equipment management services and buys and sells pre-owned laboratory instruments. The company said in May that it had raised $1.5 million, mostly from KI Investment Holdings of San Diego, to expand its services in Boston.

—In a statement released yesterday, Carlsbad, CA-based Obalon Therapeutics confirmed that it has raised $16.5 million to advance its new nonsurgical and reversible medical device for treating obesity. I had noted the financing in May, but there wasn’t much information about Obalon or its technology at that time. Obalon now says

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

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.