West Coast Biotech Roundup: IPOs, Gilead, Sofinnova, & Denouements

What a week to round up. Against a backdrop of regulatory approvals, strategic deals, and R&D initiatives, a fresh salvo of life sciences IPOs signaled a resurgence in public offerings already running ahead of last year’s pace. We also saw moves to resolve weeks of drama at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego and at the headquarters of California’s stem cell agency in San Francisco. So, without further ado…

—In a statement Monday, chairman Richard Gephardt of The Scripps Research Institute’s board of trustees said Michael Marletta plans to leave the institute, following an internal faculty revolt over the new president’s proposed deal with USC to bridge a $21 million funding shortfall. Marletta’s tenure as president began in early 2012. In a very short statement, the former St. Louis congressman said the board is working on a transition plan with Marletta.

—In our other denouement of the week, the man who succeeded Alan Trounson as president of the San Francisco-based California Institute for Regenerative Medicine pledged to act with personal ethics and integrity. A week after officially leaving his office at the state’s stem cell agency, Trounson joined the board of Newark, CA-based StemCells, a startup that received CIRM funding. The new CIRM president, Randy Mills, said he will refuse gifts or travel payments from any company, institution, or individual who gets CIRM funding. Mills also declared that he will not accept a job with any CIRM-funded company for at least a year following his departure.

—American life sciences companies raised $3.9 billion in 55 initial public offerings during the first half of 2014, accounting for more than 81 percent of the $4.7 billion raised globally in 68 IPOs, according to a tally from Burrill Media. In a statement, CEO G. Steven Burrill said, “The first half of 2014 saw the most life sciences offerings completed in any six month period ever.”

—Meanwhile, life sciences companies continued to go public, but it hasn’t been as easy as it was just a few months ago. In its first day of trading yesterday, San Diego-based Pfenex (NYSE: [[ticker:PFNX]]) fell to $5.30 a share. The company’s lead candidate is a biosimilar form of ranibizumab (Lucentis), a drug sold by Genentech and Novartis for

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4

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.