San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Vical, Sequenom, Sophiris, and More

There was a lot of news for this cowboy to round up in San Diego’s life sciences sector this week. Applied Proteomics and Acutus Medical each raised $28 million from venture investors, while Vical and Sequenom disclosed substantial staff cuts. Here’s my rundown of the good, bad, and ugly.

—San Diego’s Vical (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VICL]]) said it would lay off 47 employees, or roughly 39 percent of its workforce, as part of a restructuring following the recent failure of its lead drug candidate in a late-stage trial of patients with melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer. Vical CEO Vijay Samant said the restructuring is needed to conserve the company’s available cash, which was $70 million at the end of June. Vical will have about 74 employees following the restructuring, which is intended to focus on infectious disease vaccine programs.

—San Diego’s Applied Proteomics raised $28 million in a Series C round of financing to advance diagnostics technology—an ambitious idea that combines the capabilities of advanced mass spectrometry with big data. The company, founded by USC cancer specialist David Agus and computing visionary Danny Hillis, said it will use the capital to commercialize its system for accurately measuring all the protein fragments in a drop of blood. The Malaysian conglomerate Genting Berhad led the latest round, and was joined by existing investors Domain Associates and Vulcan Capital, the investment vehicle of billionaire Paul Allen.

—San Diego’s Acutus Medical said it closed its Series B round at $28 million, adding another $7 million since June 25th, when Acutus said it had raised $21 million from a new investor, OrbiMed Advisors and existing investors Index Ventures and Advent Ventures. The announcement adds GE Ventures as another lead investor in the round. The medical device company is developing a minimally invasive cardiac catheter for treating cardiac arrhythmias.

—Shares of San Diego’s Sophiris Bio (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SPHS]]) have regained some yardage lost last Friday, when the company made its IPO debut on the Nasdaq market (in a switch from the Toronto Stock Exchange). The biotech, which is developing 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.