San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Cadence, Mast, Illumina, and More

Last year’s biotech buyout spree continued apace last week with the acquisition of San Diego’s Cadence Pharmaceuticals. I’ve got the details, along with the rest of the local life sciences news.

—Looking to accelerate growth in its specialty pharmaceuticals business, Irish Big Pharma Mallinckrodt (NYSE: [[ticker:MNK]]) said it plans to buy San Diego’s Cadence Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CADX]]) for about $1.3 billion, or $14 a share. The buyout came several months after Cadence prevailed in a patent infringement lawsuit against Exela Pharma Science, which had tried to market a generic version of Cadence’s only product—a proprietary formulation of the painkiller acetaminophen (OFIRMEV) for intravenous injection. Cadence has marketed the drug as an option for hospital-based patients who can’t take oral pain relievers, and as an alternative to opioid-based narcotic pain relievers. Venture firms that still have a stake in Cadence include Domain Associates, Frazier Healthcare Ventures, Wellington Management, Versant Ventures, Bay City Capital, and NEA.

—San Diego-based Mast Therapeutics (NYSE: [[ticker: MSTX]]) said it plans to acquire another San Diego specialty pharmaceutical, Aires Pharmaceuticals, in an all-stock deal valued at about $5 million. Aires, which has raised at least $20 million in venture funding from MPM Capital and ProQuest Investments, would become a Mast subsidiary under the deal. Aires, founded in 2006, has licensed technology from the National Institutes of Health and the University of Cincinnati and is developing treatments for pulmonary vascular disorders such as pulmonary arterial hypertension. Mast is testing its lead drug candidate, MST-188, as a potential treatment for sickle cell anemia and acute limb ischemia.

—San Diego’s Illumina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ILMN]]) said it is creating an accelerator program for genomics-focused startups in San Francisco’s Mission Bay district that is modeled on the Y Combinator program for Web 2.0 and app developers. Illumina said it will

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

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.