Assay Depot Creates Online Market for Pfizer, Advanced BioHealing Expands, Organovo Finds Market for Bio-Printing Technology, & More San Diego Life Sciences News

Bio-engineering tissue for use in humans seems to be gaining ground in San Diego, with Organovo and Advanced BioHealing reporting progress on separate fronts. We have that and more as part of our weekly review of local life sciences news.

—After developing an Amazon.com-like site that connects biotech scientists with clinical research organizations (CROs) that provide laboratory services, San Diego’s Assay Depot has developed a private version of its online marketplace for Pfizer, (NYSE: [[ticker:PFE]]). Assay Depot CEO Kevin Lustig told me the startup he co-founded in 2006 is now working on similar projects for at least three other global pharmaceutical companies.

—Organovo CEO Keith Murphy has found a way to help support the San Diego startup’s development of 3-D bio-printer technology, which has the potential to someday create kidneys and other organs. Organovo is now licensing its technology so drug developers can test their prospective drug compounds on 3-dimensional clumps of human cells. Murphy says three partnership deals signed so far almost have Organovo operating in the black.

—San Diego’s Advanced BioHealing, which makes bio-engineered skin grafts used to treat diabetic foot ulcers, is planning to hire 50 new employees following its acquisition by Shire. Advanced BioHealing CEO Kevin Rakin told me the deal also gives Shire, based in Dublin, Ireland, a new base of operations on the West Coast.

—In his BioBeat column this week, Luke asks, “Where have all the courageous biotechies gone? He quotes Kevin Starr of Third Rock Ventures, who told him he works to instill a “nothing is impossible” attitude in the biotechs he has helped to start.

—San Diego-based Sequenom, which has been working on a noninvasive diagnostic prenatal test for Down syndrome, says it’s now getting genetic sequencing equipment and other supplies from Illumina under a three-year agreement with the San Diego-based diagnostics equipment maker. The partnership should help Sequenom’s credibility as it gets closer to seeking FDA approval for its test, which scans a blood sample from a pregnant woman for DNA linked to Down syndrome in the fetus.

—The National Institutes of Health have awarded a $698,000 small business innovation research (SBIR) grant to NanoSort, a San Diego startup developing technology to advance the development of flow cytometers. Flow cytometry is a widely used biomedical technique to enumerate, analyze, and sort cells and particles. With innovations done in the lab of UC San Diego Professor Yuhwa Lo, NanoSort is working to develop a system-on-a-chip approach to drastically reduce the size and cost of flow cytometers.

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.