San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Zogenix, Ignyta, AnaptysBio, & More

[Updated 3/18/14 10:05 am. See below.] Here is a quick rundown of the strategic partnerships, funding deals, clinical trials, and other developments that kept San Diego’s life sciences sector hopping last week.

—San Diego-based AnaptysBio and Waltham, MA-based Tesaro (NASDAQ: [[ticker:TSRO]]) agreed to collaborate in the development of certain antibody drug candidates that could be used to enhance the body’s immune system to fight solid tumor cancers. Tesaro agreed to pay AnaptysBio $17 million upfront, and as much as $324 million in milestone fees and other payments if work under their strategic partnership advances antibody drugs against three specific targets. The deal gives Tesaro a new opening in the hot field of cancer immunotherapy.

—Ignyta, a San Diego startup developing companion diagnostics and cancer drugs, began trading on the Nasdaq market Friday under the ticker symbol RXDX after the company said it had raised gross proceeds of $48 million through an underwritten public offering. Ignyta shares rose above $10 a share in trading Friday, after the company priced more than 5.2 million shares at $9.15 a share. Ignyta shares traded over the counter before moving to Nasdaq. The company said it expects to generate about $44.5 million in net proceeds from the offering.

—San Diego’s Lumena Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical developing new treatments for rare cholestatic liver diseases and metabolic disorders, said it raised $45 million in a Series B round of financing led by New Enterprise Associates. New investors Adage Capital Management and RA Capital Management joined existing investors Pappas Ventures, RiverVest Venture Partners, and Alta Partners. Proceeds will be used to advance clinical development of two experimental drugs that inhibit a protein responsible for recycling bile acids from the intestine to the liver. The company says blocking bile acid transport could reduce the liver’s absorption of bile acid and could potentially slow disease progression and improve liver function.

—San Diego’s PatientSafe Solutions said it raised $3 million in additional funding as part of a strategic deal with Telus Ventures, the investment arm of Canada’s second-biggest telecom. The digital health technology company said it also signed a related deal that makes Telus Health the exclusive reseller of the company’s proprietary PatientTouch system in Canada. The deal represents PatientSafe’s first move beyond the U.S. market.

—After taking over as the new CEO of Connect on March 3, Greg McKee said the nonprofit group still plays an

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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.