disease study, which was run for years by UCSD’s Paul Aisen. The dispute began when Aisen moved to USC this summer and tried to take the Alzheimer’s study with him.
—How about some Bay Area digital health news? Our San Francisco editor Bernadette Tansey reported Thursday that Grand Rounds, a San Francisco-based patient-doctor matching service, raised $55 million in a Series C round from Venrock, Greylock Partners, and others. The service is aimed mainly at employers who want to streamline their employees’ diagnoses and treatments.
—Also in Baghdad by the Bay (yes, that’s one of San Francisco’s old nicknames), Zephyr Health raised $17.5 million in a Series C led by Google Ventures. Zephyr pulls together disparate data sources that life-science industry clients use in their R&D and sales strategies.
—San Diego’s Pfenex (NYSE: [[ticker:PFNX]]) said it signed a five-year contract worth as much as $143.5 million to advance development of its experimental anthrax vaccine for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). If the effort is successful, Pfenex said it hopes to win a contract to stockpile 75 million doses.
—Genalyte, a San Diego diagnostic company, said it has raised a $44 million Series C round led by Khosla Ventures and joined by existing investors Redmile Group, Claremont Creek Ventures, BioMed Ventures, and Pura Vida Investments. Genalyte is using a microchip to measure protein binding between antibodies and antigens or hybridization of nucleic acids. The company says its technology can provide a complete panel of diagnostic test results from a drop of blood in 15 minutes.
—San Diego-based MediciNova (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MNOV]] said it expects to net about $16 million from a public offering that priced 5 million shares at $3.50 share. MediciNova plans to use the proceeds to advance its two drug candidates (ibudilast for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and tipelukast for certain patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis), and for general corporate purposes.
—South San Francisco, CA-based Veracyte (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VCYT]]) said Monday it has hired a new chief medical officer, Neil Barth. The position was left open last year when Rick Lanman left to become CMO of Guardant Health.
