San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Regulus, Ocera, Lithera, and More

A number of San Diego life sciences companies appeared to be taking advantage of the strengthening biotech market on Wall Street by raising capital or repositioning themselves—or both. Here’s my rundown on the deals and other news.

—San Diego-based Lithera, which is developing an injectable fat-reduction drug, said it has raised an additional $6.7 million from investors, extending its Series C financing round to $27.3 million. An existing investor, Rusnano subsidiary RusnanoMedInvest, led the financing, and was joined by new investors Mirae Asset Venture Investment, the venture arm of Korea’s Mirae Asset Financial Group, and Andrea Holdings. In a statement, Lithera said it plans to use the proceeds mostly to support efforts to advance its lead compound, salmeterol xinafoate, for reducing abdominal fat.

—San Diego-based Regulus Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:RGLS]]) priced a secondary stock offering at $9.50 a share, less than a year after going public. The company, which is developing microRNA drugs for cancer, fibrosis, and metabolic diseases, is offering 4.5 million shares and expects to raise $42.8 million in gross proceeds. Regulus said the secondary offering is expected to close next week.

—San Diego’s Ocera Therapeutics said it received $20 million through a private placement financing after completing a merger with Durham, NC-based Tranzyme Pharma. Ocera is now a public company and trades under the ticker symbol (NASDAQ: [[ticker:OCRX]]). Domain Associates, Thomas McNerney & Partners, Sofinnova Ventures, InterWest Partners, Greenspring Associates, Agechem, CDIB, and Wasatch Advisors, invested approximately $20 million in the company through a private placement financing

—MediStem, a San Diego regenerative medicine company previously known as MediStem Laboratories, said it has filed paperwork with federal securities regulators to regain

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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.