SD Life Sciences Roundup: Amylin, Illumina, AstraZeneca Acquires Ardea, & More

Image licensed by Depositphotos.com/Christian Delbert.

Some big changes are underway in San Diego, with AstraZeneca’s big buyout of Ardea Biosciences and Illumina’s ambitious bid to develop an app store. There’s big biology and big data happening too.

—Illumina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ILMN]]), the San Diego maker of DNA sequencing instruments, unveiled its plan to create Basespace Apps, an open platform for genomic software developers to make apps that can help scientists slice and dice DNA data. The strategy is to enhance the value of Illumina’s MiSeq benchtop DNA sequencing instrument in the same way the iPhone benefits from independently developed apps.

—-AstraZeneca (NYSE: [[ticker:AZN]]), the UK’s second-largest pharmaceutical firm, agreed to acquire San Diego’s Ardea Biosciences (NASDAQ: [[ticker:RDEA]]) for $32 a share, which represents a total value of approximately $1.26 billion, including existing cash. AstraZeneca sees value in Ardea’s lead drug candidate, a new treatment for gout.

—After rebuffing an unsolicited $3.5 billion takeover offer from Bristol-Myers Squibb earlier this year, San Diego’s Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AMLN]]) is looking for prospective buyers, according to press accounts. The move apparently prompted Carl Icahn, the financier and shareholder activist, to voluntarily withdraw a lawsuit filed over a corporate bylaw protecting Amylin directors who had voted to reject the offer. Icahn told reporters he still thinks Amylin should be sold, and dropped the suit after talking with Amylin CEO Daniel Bradbury.

—San Diego’s Biotix Holdings, which makes pipettes, laboratory consumables, and related products, has raised $2.2 million toward a $2.4 million equity round, according to a recent regulatory filing. Biotix was founded in 2005 by Grotech and Ferrer Freeman & Co. to serve life sciences, clinical, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology laboratories.

—RainTree Oncology elaborated on its recent $11.1 million financing round. In a statement, CEO Mike Martin says, “This second round financing will enable us to continue growing our core business, which provides community oncology practices a unique suite of products and services that improve quality of care and practice performance.” The recent financing brings the company’s total funding to $22.5 million.

—Xconomy brought together a group of leaders in business, technology, and genomics to discuss the emerging field of “quantified health,” and how the new tools of molecular biology are data analytics are making it possible to detect early signs of disease long before any symptoms appear. This combination of big biology with big data has already begun—and it’s leading to health care that can be predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory.

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.