San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Otonomy, Verdezyne, and IPOs

treat various types of inflammation of the middle ear in children who are 6 months to 5 years old, and who undergo tympanostomy tube placement surgery.

—With San Diego’s Zogenix (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ZGNX]]) in the middle of a controversy over Zohydro, its pure hydrocodone pain-killer, Stamford, CT-based Purdue Pharma said it has filed a New Drug Application seeking authorization to market its own pure hydrocodone pain-killer. Unlike Zohydro, Purdue says its version incorporates abuse-deterrent properties that make it more difficult for illicit drug users to crush its tablet for snorting, chewing, or intravenous injection. Zohydro has come under fire as a potential drug-abuse threat.

—Meanwhile, back at Zogenix headquarters in San Diego, the company said it has agreed to sell its proprietary Sumavel DosePro needle-free injection delivery system, which was developed as a way to quickly treat migraine headaches. Endo International (Nasdaq: [[ticker:ENDP]]) of Dublin, Ireland, agreed to pay $85 million in cash and milestone payments of up to $20 million for the drug-and-device combo. Zogenix CEO Roger Hawley said the sale allows the company to have greater focus on its commercial launch of its Zohydro, its hydrocodone pain-killer, and to continue the development of abuse deterrent formulations of Zohydro.

—The Malaysian agricultural conglomerate Sime Darby Berhad became the lead investor in a $48 million funding for Verdezyne, the Carlsbad, CA-based industrial biotech. Verdezyne and Sime Darby executives signed the agreement in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur in a ceremony attended by President Barack Obama and Malaysian Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib Razak. Verdezyne, founded in 2005, genetically engineers various strains of yeast to produce key industrial chemicals like adipic acid and dodecanedioic acid (DDDA) that are currently made from petroleum-based intermediates.

—Domain Associates said it has invested $6.5 million through its Beijing-based partnership, Domain Elite, in Smart Medical Systems, an Israeli company with an innovative design for endoscopes and colonoscopes. Domain Elite plans to introduce the device, which uses a flexible tube equipped with a camera to look at the inside the human digestive tract, in China.

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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.