fund three pivotal late-stage trials in a total of 375 patients with acute alcoholic hepatitis and fulminant hepatic failure. The company’s existing investors include including Delphi Ventures, DFJ DragonFund China, HBM BioMed China, Heights Capital Management, MedVenture Associates, Toucan Capital, Valley Ventures, and Versant Ventures.
—BioNano Genomics, a nanotechnology startup that moved to San Diego from the Philadelphia area about two years ago, unveiled an automated benchtop instrument called the Irys System that takes a new approach to gene sequencing. The company says its technology images extremely long strands of a single DNA molecule, enabling scientists to visualize the genome architecture in its native state. Instead of fragmenting and amplifying DNA, BioNano Genomics says the Irys System uses proprietary technology to uncoil and confine long DNA molecules in nanochannel arrays.
—San Diego’s Epic Sciences said it has raised $13 million in a Series B round of equity financing for its ultra-sensitive cancer diagnostics technology. The company’s first application of the technology is to identify and analyze extremely rare circulating tumor cells in a blood sample. The investors included Domain Associates, Roche Venture Fund, and Pfizer Venture Investments, in addition to undisclosed individual investors.
—Qualcomm Life, the wireless healthcare business created by San Diego’s Qualcomm (Nasdaq: [[ticker:QCOM]]) began
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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.
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