SD Life Sciences Roundup: Sotera, Janssen, Tandem Diabetes, & More

Biotech laboratory pipettes

I found some interesting nuggets of life sciences news from San Diego over the past week, and I have all the shiny details here.

—San Diego’s Sotera Wireless, which won FDA approval last year for a mobile device and related technology for monitoring patient vital signs, said it has raised $14.8 million from Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE: [[ticker:SFE]]) and other investors. Sotera plans to use proceeds from the financing to build out its sales network and channel distribution partners. Sotera, founded in 2004 as Triage Wireless, has raised a total of at least $60.8 million. Investors include Delphi Ventures, Sanderling Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, EDBI, Intel Capital, Cerner Capital, and the West Health Investment Fund.

—In the year since Johnson & Johnson opened its Janssen Labs innovation center for life sciences startups in San Diego, 18 early stage companies have been admitted to the “no strings attached” business accelerator program. Janssen said it has added additional space for a “concept lab” that offers solo entrepreneurs affordable access to single bench spaces, and for an “open collaboration space” with an open-plan layout to encourage interaction between life science entrepreneurs.

—In his BioBeat column this week, Luke explained why the term “precision medicine” has been gaining currency in academic, clinical, and corporate circles—and why “personalized medicine” has been falling out of favor.

—Tandem Diabetes Care, a San Diego medical device maker, said it has acquired more than 23 U.S. patents and patent applications relating to the treatment of diabetes from Smiths Medical ASD of St. Paul, MN. Tandem said it also got a license to 28 other U.S. patents and patent applications owned by Smiths Medical. Tandem Diabetes raised $36.4 million in September, 10 months after the FDA cleared its wearable insulin pump for use.

—The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) plans to shift its emphasis away from funding academic R&D as it designates hundreds of millions of dollars for use over the next four years. CIRM plans to increase its support for early stage clinical trials and other work toward regulatory approval of commercial therapies.

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.