win FDA approval for a version of the drug that would be administered as a nasal spray, a delivery method that would bypass a patient’s balky gastrointestinal tract and enable the drug to directly enter the bloodstream.
—The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, authorized by the passage of a $3 billion bond measure in 2004, awarded UC San Diego a $6.4 million grant to hire Eric Ahrens, a professor of biological sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Ahrens uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the activities of living cells in the body. Ahrens plans to use the grant to create a Stem Cell Imaging Center at UCSD to characterize the anatomy, function, and molecular behavior of stem cells. The institute issued six awards to help California research institutions attract out-of-state researchers who can help apply stem cell research to cure diseases and injuries.
—Would you share your personal health and fitness data to help scientists gain new insights into public health and diseases in general? That’s the question being posed by the Qualcomm Institute, the research center at UC San Diego previously known as the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). With financial support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the institute has begun a health data initiative to persuade the companies that make mobile health devices and fitness apps to make their data available for research projects. Researchers Kevin Patrick and Jerry Sheehan will lead the project.
—PharmAria Therapeutics, a San Diego biotech started last year by Kevin Holme and Amira Pharmaceuticals co-founders John Hutchinson and Jilly Evans, said it has changed its name to PharmAkea. Evans said in an e-mail the move is intended to avoid confusion with Cambridge, MA-based Ariad Pharmaceuticals, which trades under the stock symbol ARIA. She wrote, “I like this name since the Kea is a New Zealand parrot known for its intelligence, innovation and curiosity! At PharmAkea we emulate the Kea’s attributes and add a sense of urgency to develop high quality drug candidates for fibrotic and proliferative diseases.” Celgene provided seed funding, and the startup has been raising its first round of institutional funding, Evans said.
