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

$54 million in so-called sequestration of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. Kristiina Vuori of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Scott Lippman of the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, and Tony Hunter of the Salk Institute issued the call yesterday. With more than $850 million in NIH grants awarded here each year, they say the mandated 6.4 percent cut is equivalent to the annual salaries of 1,465 graduate students and postdocs.

—San Diego-based Synthetic Genomics says SGI-DNA, a subsidiary created with Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) of Coralville, IA, has moved to focus its operations exclusively on commercializing a wide range of synthetic DNA products and technologies. Synthetic Genomics and IDT began co-manufacturing synthetic gene products a year ago in small batches—as many as 5 kilobases (5,000 base pairs of DNA or RNA). The partners said they now are expanding to produce co-branded, cloned synthetic DNA constructs up to 2 Mbp, a product offering that was not previously available.

—San Diego’s Ligand Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LGND]]) said it received a $1.4 million milestone payment from Retrophin under a 2012 licensing agreement for the development of Retrophin’s lead drug candidate. The drug is under development for the treatment of focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), a rare disease that attacks the kidney’s filtering system.

—San Diego’s Tandem Diabetes Care said the FDA has cleared “t:connect,” its Web-based data management application for use in the United States. The app, which is both iOS and PC-compatible, is intended to serve as the data management companion to Tandem’s t:slim insulin pump. The company says pump users will be able to download the app from Tandem’s website by the end of March.

—San Diego-based Ignyta said Silicon Valley Bank has added $1 million in venture debt to a $500,000 financing deal signed last summer. Ignyta CEO Jonathan Lim told me a few months ago that the startup plans to begin clinical studies this year to validate its new type of molecular diagnostic for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the chronic and systemic inflammatory disorder that afflicts more than 1.5 million Americans.

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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.