San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Isis, Receptos, Suneva, and More

Much of San Diego’s life sciences sector is returning from the 2014 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, which ended yesterday in San Francisco. Here’s my rundown on local news over the past week.

—The French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi agreed to pay $700 million for a 12 percent stake in Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ALNY]]) in a deal that creates a new alliance with Genzyme, the Cambridge, MA, biotech that Sanofi acquired in 2011 for $20.1 billion. Carlsbad, CA-based Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ISIS]]) said the recently announced Genzyme-Alnylam alliance triggered a $7.5 million payment from Alnylam, along with additional potential future payments.

—San Diego-based Receptos (NASDAQ: [[ticker:RCPT]]) said it raised $117.4 million in gross proceeds from its recently completed secondary stock offering. All of the shares in the offering, which totaled more than 3.8 million shares were sold by Receptos. The company plans to use the net proceeds to advance development of RPC1063, its lead experimental drug candidate, in ongoing clinical trials for relapsing multiple sclerosis and ulcerative colitis, other R&D programs, and general corporate purposes.

—Suneva Medical, a San Diego startup that specializes in skin care products targeting general dermatology and aesthetic markets, said it has raised $35 million in a combination of debt and equity financing. Polaris Partners led the investment portion of the deal, which amounted to $20 million in a Series B round. HealthCare Royalty Partners participated in the round and provided an unspecified growth-capital term loan. Comerica Bank provided working capital financing.

—North Carolina’s Salix Pharmaceuticals is laying off about 200 employees of San Diego-based Santarus, and closing the local operations that came with its $2.6 billion buyout of Santarus late last year. The layoffs are set for March 6, according to a report in UT San Diego. Santarus was focused on specialty drugs for treating ulcerative colitis, diabetes, and excess stomach acid, among other things. Salix outlined its post-acquistion reorganization here.

—San Diego’s Millennium Laboratories said it has acquired RxAnte, a McClean, VA, startup that uses predictive analytics to help make sure that patients maintain their prescription regimen. Financial terms were not disclosed, according to a statement. RxAnte was founded in 2011, and had raised about $4.5 million in Series A funding from San Francisco-based Aberdare and the San Diego-based West Health Investment Fund. Millennium, with about 1,300 employees at its Poway, CA, headquarters, uses urine and pharmacogenetic testing to help healthcare providers treat pain, substance-abuse disorders, and other chronic diseases.

—California Gov. Jerry Brown has appointed Biocom CEO Joe Panetta to a seat on the governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Panetta, who takes over the seat left vacant by the death of Duane Roth last year, will continue to head Biocom, the nonprofit industry group based in San Diego.

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.