In case anyone noticed last week that I was missing, I’ve enclosed a photo below from Rocky Mountain National Park, where I spent much of my vacation. And in case anyone is wondering why I came back, here’s my latest update on San Diego’s life sciences news.
—In a huge setback for Halozyme Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:HALO]]), the FDA asked the San Diego company and two pharma partners to halt patient testing of combo drugs that use Halozyme’s recombinant human hyaluronidase, or rHuPH20. The FDA asked the company for pre-clinical data to put to rest agency concerns that the Halozyme enzyme would not affect human reproduction or fertility. More than 10.6 million Halozyme shares changed hands on the news, a 1,307 percent increase over its 65-day average volume, as the share price fell by almost 50 percent to $4.30. P
—San Diego-based Avalon Ventures, which is one of the most active life sciences VC firms in San Diego, has begun to raise capital for its 10th investment fund, according to a Dow Jones. The venture firm founded by Kevin Kinsella, which also has an office in Boston, plans to raise at least $200 million, according to the report.
—Auspex Pharmaceuticals, which is developing deuterium-based analogs of clinically validated drugs, has raised $1.5 million of a planned $3 million round of debt and rights, according to
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.
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