San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: IPOs, Illumina, KFx Medical, & More

Arthrex of Naples, FL. In a statement, KFx said the jury upheld the validity of its patents and found that Arthrex had infringed the KFx patents by promoting its SutureBridge and SpeedBridge rotator-cuff repair procedures. Privately held KFx is backed by Alloy Ventures, Charter Life Sciences, Arboretum Ventures, Montreux Equity Partners, and MB Venture Partners.

—Synthetic biology pioneer J. Craig Venter shared his vision of designing new biological systems with science writer Zoe Corbyn, who wrote an in-depth profile of Venter published by The Observer, the London Sunday newspaper. Venter is granting some interviews as he prepares for the grand opening of the new J. Craig Venter Institute facility in La Jolla, and to promote his second book, Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life.

—San Diego-based Illumina has licensed technology developed by scientists at the University of Washington that is capable of reading the sequence of a single DNA molecule. In the diagnostic system, DNA is pulled through a nanopore while an ion current transmitted through the pore electronically reads the DNA’s sequence. Illumina got exclusive worldwide rights to develop and market the technology, according to a UW statement.

—San Diego-based Trovagene (NASDAQ: [[ticker:TROV]]) said it will collaborate with an unnamed pharmaceutical company to evaluate its proprietary technology for detecting certain types of lung cancer mutations in patient urine samples. Trovagene says its diagnostic technology can identify specific types of epidermal growth factor receptor mutations from short fragments of DNA and RNA that spill out of diseased cells and pass into urine.

—Research findings published by a team of scientists from the UC San Diego School of Medicine identify a new biochemical marker in urine that is tied to diabetic kidney disease. The findings detailed in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology also serve as the foundation for a new clinical metabolomics platform being developed by ClinMet, an early stage company housed at the Janssen Labs facility in San Diego. UCSD’s Kumar Sharma, who led the research team, is ClinMet’s scientific founder. The company says its technology is identifying new biomarkers for kidney function and could be used to sharpen drug development and clinical trials related to chronic kidney disease, as well as to diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

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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.