San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Evoke, Halozyme, Biocept, and More

San Diego Downtown, San Diego Bay

The life sciences are on a roll in San Diego, as more companies line up to go public. We have the latest on local IPOs, along with the rest of the local industry news.

—Healthcare IPOs are back, according to EY’s U.S. IPO Insights Report. The quarterly report issued by the firm previously known as Ernst & Young says healthcare was the most active industry sector during the third quarter, with 21 healthcare IPOs generating more than $2.4 billion in proceeds. The cumulative total for all types of IPOs throughout the country so far this year is 160, a number that already surpasses the 137 IPOs for the entire year of 2012. It is the highest volume since 2007.

—Speaking of IPOs, San Diego’s Evoke Pharma (NASDAQ: [[ticker:EVOK]]) began trading Wednesday, opening at $11.15 after pricing 2.1 million shares of its common stock at $12, the low end of the expected range of $12 to $14, and yielding an initial market cap of roughly $69 million. Investors include Domain Associates, Latterell Venture Partners, and Windamere Venture Partners. Evoke shares closed at $11.70 in regular trading today. One extraordinary aspect of the offering is that Evoke has only two full-time employees, and has outsourced development of its only product, a new formulation of metoclopramide as a nasal spray for treating symptoms associated with acute and recurrent diabetic gastroparesis.

—Biocept, a San Diego company with technology for collecting and analyzing circulating tumor cells, said in a filing disclosed earlier this week that it looks to raise as much as $23 million in an initial public offering. Biocept was founded in 1997, and plans to list on the Nasdaq market under the symbol BIOC. Renaissance Capital said Biocept submitted its plans for an IPO confidentially on August 19.

—San Diego-based PatientSafe Solutions, which provides technology that helps improve nursing care, said it has raised an additional $7 million from EDBI, the investment arm of the Singapore Economic development Board. With this latest cash, Patient Safe has raised a

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

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.