SD Life Sciences Roundup: Celladon, Gen-Probe, Organovo, and More

Here’s our wrap-up of news from San Diego’s life sciences sector since last week.

—San Diego’s Celladon raised $43 million to recapitalize the company and to conduct a 200-patient study of a gene therapy intended to help people with advanced heart failure. Celladon had previously raised more than $73 million in venture capital, according to VentureWire. Celladon’s therapy, Mydicar, delivers a gene that codes for an enzyme that helps to keep the heart beating, and which declines in late-stage heart failure.

—The FDA approved San Diego-based Gen-Probe’s new diagnostic assay for prostate cancer gene 3 (PCA3), which can help doctors determine if repeated prostate biopsies are warranted for men who have elevated of the prostate specific antigen (PSA). While a high PSA level is not a definitive indicator of prostate cancer, Gen-Probe says the PCA3 gene is a biofactor that is typically over-expressed in 95 percent of prostate cancers.

—Xconomist Peter Kuhn, a cell biologist at The Scripps Research Institute, talked with me about work that has advanced technology for conducting “liquid biopsies” and is sensitive enough to identify and analyze circulating tumor cells shed by solid tumor carcinomas. A San Diego startup, Epic Sciences, has licensed the technology for commercial development.

—Organovo, the San Diego startup developing 3-dimensional “bio-printing” technology was listed on the Over the Counter market under the ticker ONVO, following a reverse merger with a public company and $6.5 million in private placement financing. Organovo CEO Keith Murphy describes the complex steps as an alternative public offering.

—Option-to-buy deals are popping up more frequently in the life sciences sector. Xconomy New York Editor Arlene Weintraub noted that the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi negotiated the right to acquire Cambridge, MA-based Warp Drive Bio sometime in the future, providing certain milestones are met, by providing part of the $125 million in funding that Warp Drive recently raised. Another Cambridge startup, Constellation Pharmaceuticals, signed a similar deal with Roche’s Genentech, which pledged $95 million in funding.

—San Diego’s Halozyme Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:HALO]]) said it raised $81.8 million (after fees and expenses) in a recent secondary public offering of more than 7.8 million shares. Halozyme said it plans to use the proceeds to build its inventory for anticipated product launches, R&D, and general corporate purposes

—San Diego’s Cardium Therapeutics (NYSE Amex: [[ticker:CXM]]) said it raised a total of $5 million (before deducting fees and expenses) is a secondary public offering of more than 17.8 million shares. The company plans to use the net proceeds for general working capital purposes.

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.