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

bigger-than-expected losses because of a delay in the collection of diagnostic segment revenues.

—San Diego-based Afraxis and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals signed an agreement that will enable the Marlborough, MA-based pharma to use Afraxis technology to assess the effectiveness of potential drug compounds in treating disorders of the central nervous system (CNS). The new Afraxis technology advances neuroscientists’ ability to rapidly analyze how drugs affect dendritic spines—the pinhead-like protrusions along the neuron’s cell body.

—San Diego’s DermTech said it has raised $5.6 million in Series B founding to develop a non-invasive diagnostic test for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Jacobs Investment, the Del Mar, CA-based investment arm of Qualcomm scion Gary Jacobs, led the new round of financing, which was joined by unnamed new and existing investors.

—Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: [[ticker:JNJ]]) completed its billion-dollar buyout of Aragon Pharmaceuticals, the San Diego cancer drug developer. Meghana Keshavan of the San Diego Business Journal reported that former Aragon CEO Richard Heyman and other Aragon executives and staff have formed a new San Diego company, Seragon Pharmaceuticals, that intends to use some Aragon technology to develop a breast cancer treatment. J&J paid $650 upfront to acquire Aragon, with an additional $350 million in milestone payments.

—Epic Sciences, the San Diego biotech startup developing advanced cancer diagnostics technology, named Murali Prahalad as president and CEO. Prahalad was previously the vice president of corporate strategy at Carlsbad, CA-based Life Technologies. Epic is developing technology to detect and identify cancer cells that may be circulating in a blood sample.

—San Diego-based Acadia Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ACAD]]) named Terrence Moore as Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer. Moore, who reports to Acadia CEO Uli Hacksell, is responsible for leading Acadia’s commercial activities. The company is developing new treatments for disorders of the central nervous system.

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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.