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

$5 million to acquire all outstanding shares of Vialis’ stock, with as much as $5 million more to be paid if certain growth objectives are met over the next three years. Vialis integrates core software systems, including electronic laboratory notebooks, laboratory execution systems, and laboratory information management systems.

— San Diego’s Larry Smarr and Peter Attia are among the first 10 speakers announced for the 2013 TEDMED symposium in Washington, D.C. Smarr, founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, plans to talk about his microbiome and quantified health. Attia, founder and president of the Nutrition Science Initiative, is slated to talk about the nation’s obesity crisis. The exclusive show that mixes medical and healthcare presentations with humor, music, and other entertainments, is scheduled for April 16-19 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

—Predictive analytics venture investor Correlation Ventures, based in San Diego and Menlo Park, CA, said it made investments in 26 companies in 2012, including 10 in the fourth quarter. Co-founder and managing partner David Coats explained the firm’s investment strategy for me last June. The latest deals bring Correlation’s portfolio of companies to 39. So far, 43 percent of the firm’s investments are in enterprise IT and technology-enabled business services, 34 percent in life sciences, 19 percent in consumer, and 4 percent in energy or cleantech deals.

—San Diego antibody drugmaker Ambrx said it had recruited Lawson Macartney, a senior executive from Shire Pharmaceuticals, as president and CEO. Macartney, a Ph.D. and doctor of veterinary medicine, has more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Before joining Shire, Macartney was a senior vice president of global product strategy and project management at GlaxoSmithKline.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

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.