San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Optimer, Ambit, AnaptysBio, & More

technology for developing antibody drugs—including a monoclonal antibody for treating rheumatoid arthritis. RuiYi CEO Paul Grayson said the company has signed partnership deals with arGEN-X, CMC Biologics, and Genor BioPharma to commercialize novel biologic drugs in China to treat autoimmune diseases and cancer.

—San Diego’s AnaptysBio landed a government contract to produce batches of antibodies to counter the deadly effects of ricin, a biological agent that is relatively easy for bioterrorists to make. AnaptysBio CEO Hamza Suria said the company would deliver its ricin antibodies to the U.S. Army’s Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center, a Maryland-based agency regarded as the U.S. bulwark for chemical and biological defense.

—An international team of scientists that included Synthetic Genomics founder and CEO J. Craig Venter said it demonstrated a new method for developing synthetic vaccine viruses for use in flu vaccine development that took just four days and four hours. The new approach could enable a much more rapid response to pandemics, according to a May 15 study in the journal Science Translational Medicine. In comparison, it took nearly seven months to develop a vaccine for the H1N1 flu outbreak of 2009.

—[Clarifies that Optimer moved headquarters to Jersey City] The share price of Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:OPTR]]), which moved its headquarters to Jersey City, NJ, late last year from San Diego, soared following a Bloomberg report that AstraZeneca (NYSE: [[ticker:AZN]]), Japan’s Astellas Pharma, and Cubist Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CBST]]) made first-round bids to acquire Optimer. The company makes the antibiotic fidaxomicin (Dificid) for treating intestinal infections caused by C. difficile bacteria. Optimer shares soared on a similar report in early April.

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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.