San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: PrecisionMed, Acutus, & More

It’s been a light week for new developments among San Diego’s biotech and medical device companies. Here’s a very quick rundown.

—PrecisionMed, a Solana Beach, CA-based supplier of human cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), said it has begun to enroll up to 2,000 donors in an Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Registry. The ALS Registry would be used in the discovery and validation of biomarkers for neurodegenerative disease. The 18-year-old company says it provides accurately annotated human biological material to customers that include nearly every major pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, as well as numerous academic, and government research institutions.

—Acutus Medical, a San Diego startup developing an electrophysiological mapping system to help treat patients with irregular heartbeats, has raised $2.5 million of a planned $5 million round of debt, rights, and securities, according to a recent regulatory filing. The company raised about $5.5 million last year from investors that include Index Ventures and London’s Advent Venture Partners.

—Thomas, McNerney partner Pratik Shah discussed his decision to move last year back to San Diego, along with the firm’s life sciences investments, in an interview with Padma Nagappan published by U-T San Diego. As we’ve previously noted, the venture firm has sunk a total of close to $100 million in the region, including Tioga Pharmaceuticals, SG Biofuels, Zogenix (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ZGNX]]), Ocera Therapeutics, Cebix, Auspex Pharmaceuticals, and now-defunct Altair Therapeutics.

 

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.