San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Trius, CoDa, Zacharon, & More

Image licensed by Depositphotos.com/Christian Delbert.

The annual International CES in Las Vegas again featured a Digital Health Summit, which included a number of San Diego-based startups. Rick Valencia of Qualcomm Life posted an interesting blog here, and an end-of-year report from Rock Health showed that investments in digital health startups increased more than 44 percent in 2012, to $1.4 billion from $968 million in 2011. We have a rundown, along with the rest of the week’s life sciences news.

—Novato, CA-based BioMarin Pharmaceutical (Nasdaq: [[ticker:BMRN]]) said it acquired San Diego’s Zacharon Pharmaceuticals for $10 million, with potential milestone payments that were not disclosed. Zacharon, backed by San Diego’s Avalon Ventures, specializes in developing small-molecule drugs that interact with complex carbohydrates known as glycans, which are thought to be promising drug targets for rare diseases. Zacharon is working on treatments aimed at mucopolysaccharidosis disorders, as well as genetic disorders such as Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff disease.

—The FDA approved 39 new drugs in 2012, and life sciences companies in California developed nine, according to the annual California Biomedical Industry Report. The 2013 report found the biomedical industry ranked as California’s No. 1 industry in jobs (269,997), venture capital investments ($1.98 billion through the first three quarters), and federal research funding through the National Institutes of Health ($3.3 billion).

—San Diego-based CoDa Therapeutics, which received $20 million earlier this month from a fund administered by Domain Associates and Moscow-based Rusnano, said its once-a-week topical treatment for venous leg ulcers greatly improved healing in a mid-stage trial. The company said the gel’s active ingredient, an unmodified antisense oligonucleotide (Nexagon), was safe and increased complete healing. The treatment dampens the inflammatory response, leading to reduced inflammation, swelling, and scarring.

—The FDA has designated a late-stage experimental antibiotic being developed by San Diego’s Trius Therapeutics (Nasdaq: [[ticker:TSRX]]) for fast-track review once the company files

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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.