San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Santarus, Shire, Illumina, & More

developing a hair-loss therapy and other products based on the manufacturing process.

—As I read Luke Timmerman’s fearless football and biotech picks for 2012, I despaired that San Diego’s life sciences industry had failed to make a showing, much like the San Diego Chargers. But at the end of his BioBeat column, Luke awarded his Tom Coughlin Coach of the Year honor to Illumina CEO Jay Flatley, who rallied his players at the San Diego maker of genome sequencing instruments to hold the line in a hostile takeover attempt by the Swiss medical giant Roche.

—San Diego-based ImThera Medical said a study of its implanted medical device for treating obstructive sleep apnea showed that the device improved the conditions of most patients. ImThera said 10 of 13 patients in a clinical study in Belgium responded to the therapy, which uses electrical neurostimulation to keep the tongue from blocking the airway of sleeping patients. The company said its treatment did not awaken patients and was not painful. The device has been approved for use in much of Europe, but not in the United States.

—San Diego-based MediciNova (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MNOV]]) said the National Institute on Drug Abuse has awarded funding for a mid-stage clinical trial to study the use of ibudilast for the treatment of methamphetamine addiction. The support builds on preliminary work the company has done with UCLA. Preclinical studies have shown the drug may prevent the activation of certain cells in the central nervous system that have been linked to drug dependence.

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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.