San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Optimer, Zogenix, MediciNova, & More

We saw a flurry of updates from San Diego’s biotech and medical device companies over the past week, running the gamut from the formation of a new startup to funding deals and fresh regulatory concerns. Here’s my wrap-up:

—Shares of San Diego’s Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:OPTR]]) gained more than 13 percent Wednesday, rising by over $1.40 to close at $12.13 a share in trading that was more than six times Optimer’s recent average volume. Wall Street rushed to buy after Optimer said it is exploring a possible sale of the company. Investors seemed unconcerned that Optimer also said it had replaced its CEO and general counsel and hired a new independent auditor—after ousting its previous chairman and purging several other executives last April. Few people seemed focused on a sentence in Optimer’s disclosure that I found riveting: “The previously disclosed investigations of these issues by the relevant U.S. authorities are ongoing and the Company continues to cooperate with those authorities.”

—San Diego-based MediciNova (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MNOV]]) said the FDA granted “fast track” status to ibudilast, the company’s proposed treatment for methamphatamine dependence. MediciNova said fast track status can shorten the time that federal regulators typically need to decide whether a proposed drug should be approved.

—San Diego’s Zogenix (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ZGNX]]) said the FDA had notified the company that its ruling on the company’s application to market extended-release hydrocodone bitartrate would be delayed by at least several weeks past March 1, the agency’s original target date for taking action. In its statement, Zogenix said the FDA did not say why its ruling would be delayed.

—An Xconomy-led discussion billed as San Diego Biotech Leaders of Tomorrow identified genomics, genetic diagnostics, industrial biotechnology, biologics R&D, stem cell therapies, and health IT technologies as emerging clusters of expertise in San Diego. I recapped the conversation—which came pretty close to serving as a summary of the life sciences industry here.

—Three of San Diego’s most-prominent cancer-research leaders deplored across-the-board federal budget cuts set to take effect today. If no action is taken, they say San Diego will lose more than

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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.