San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Aragon, Santarus, Tocagen, and More

The $1 billion buyout of San Diego’s Aragon Pharmaceuticals is expected to greatly expand Johnson & Johnson’s drug pipeline for treating prostate cancer. We have that at the top of San Diego’s life sciences news, along with other developments over the past week.

—Moving to capitalize on the success of its prostate cancer drug, abiraterone acetate (Zytiga), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: [[ticker:JNJ]]) signed a definitive agreement to acquire San Diego-based Aragon Pharmaceuticals for an upfront cash payment of $650 million and as much as $350 million in milestone payments. Aragon specializes in developing drugs for hormone-driven cancers, and the deal could extend J&J’s reign with Aragon’s pipeline of drugs targeting castration-resistant prostate cancer. Before the deal closes, Aragon said it plans to spin out its drug program targeting metastatic breast cancer in a newly formed biotech called Seragon Pharmaceuticals. The billion-dollar deal had one major side-effect—the share price of San Francisco-based Medivation (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MDVN]]) took a hit on the news. Medivation is a rival developer of drugs for hormone-driven prostate cancer.

—San Diego-based Santarus (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SNTS]]) said the FDA has accepted the application it submitted with partner Pharming Group NV to commercialize recombinant human C1 esterase inhibitor (Ruconest) in the United States. The biologic was developed as a treatment for a rapid, dangerous swelling of the skin known as hereditary angioedema. The FDA’s response is expected by April, 2014.

—In a separate announcement, Santarus CEO Gerald Proehl was named as the 2013 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in life sciences in San Diego.

—Voices Against Brain Cancer, a nonprofit group based in New York, awarded a $300,000 grant to San Diego-based Tocagen to support its experimental gene therapy treatment for patients with recurrent glioma brain cancer. Tocagen is now enrolling patients in an early stage clinical trial that uses a

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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.