San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Shire, Thesan, ViaCyte, and More

technology to Reflexion Health, which is moving into the West Health Incubator to commercialize the technology.

—Dean Tozer, a corporate development executive with Shire Regenerative Medicine, joined Life Technologies CEO Greg Lucier and other industry executives during the Seventh Annual Stem Cell Meeting on the Mesa to talk about the clinical outlook for regenerative medicine. Tozer said Big Pharma business executives are getting involved in talks with prospective biotech partners much sooner to determine whether prospective business deals are really worth it. Shire is basing most of its new regenerative medicine business in San Diego.

—A study done by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has raised concerns about a class of medications that are prescribed for patients who are losing their eyesight through a disease known as “wet” macular degeneration. Drugs like bevacizumab (Avastin), aflibercept (Eylea), ranibizumab (Lucentis), and pegaptanib (Macugen), are prescribed to inhibit the blood-vessel growth factor vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). VEGF has been implicated in stimulating abnormal blood vessel growth in a range of cancers and eye diseases. But Scripps says their scientists found that without VEGF, a large subset of light-sensing cells lost their main blood supply and shut down, causing severe vision loss.

—Targeson CEO Jack DeFranco told me the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases have awarded the company more than $551,000 to continue its Small Business Innovative Research Phase 2 grant. Targeson has proposed using an ultrasound-triggered delivery of siRNA as a treatment for diabetic kidney disease.

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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.