San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Arena, Organovo, Isis, & More

option to an exclusive worldwide license for XEN701, an antisense drug candidate intended to suppress the production of hepcidin, the peptide hormone (produced by the liver) that helps to regulate iron levels in the blood, anemia, and the body’s inflammatory response. The move triggers a $2 million payment from Xenon, which plans to develop the drug for patients with chronic kidney disease.

—Carlsbad, CA-based Life Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LIFE]]) said it has acquired Life Science Korea (LSK), a leading instrument distributor based in Seoul, South Korea. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Life Technologies, which is itself being acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific of Waltham, MA, in a $13.6 billion deal announced in April, said the LSK acquisition dovetails with its purchase of consumables distributor KDR and is part of the company’s strategy to sell directly to consumers in South Korea.

—San Diego’s Oberon Fuels, which has technology to produce a cleaner-burning alternative to diesel fuel, said it received a $500,000 grant from California’s San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District to produce fuel-grade dimethyl ether (DME) at its small-scale production facility in Brawley, CA. Beginning this month, Oberon said its plant initially will produce 4,500 gallons of DME per day, which will be used in field trials by two heavy-duty Volvo trucks driven by Safeway. Until Oberon developed its new technology for DME production, the company said the fuel was too expensive for use as a transportation fuel in North America.

—Domain Associates, the venture capital firm that specializes in life sciences investments, said Nimesh Shah has been promoted to partner in the firm’s San Diego office. Shah joined Domain in 2006. He is a co-founder and board member of Zyga Technology, and on the board of Benvenue Medical, Cotera, Miramar Labs, Sequent Medical, and Twelve (Foundry Newco VII). He also serves as a board observer at NeuroPace, ReVision Optics, and Tandem Diabetes Care.

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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.