San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Digirad, AMN Healthcare, and More

San Diego landmark, Coronado Bridge, San Diego Bay

With the exception of a new buyout-focused diagnostics company, it seemed to be the week for relatively small deals for San Diego’s life sciences companies. Here’s my roundup.

—Former Gen-Probe CEO Carl Hull and strategist Eric Tardif have formed Maravai Life Sciences and entered into a partnership with GTCR, a Chicago private equity firm, to acquire companies and products focused on in vitro testing and diagnostics, lab services, and related life sciences tools.  After raising a new $3.3 billion fund, GTCR will invest up to $300 million to support Maravai’s roll-up strategy.

—San Diego medical software developer CorTechs Labs has secured $1.2 million from investors, according to a recent regulatory filing. In a statement, the company said the Series B round of financing, led by the Malaysian investment holding company Genting Berhad through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Dragasac Ltd., is intended to accelerate development of the company’s brain atrophy analysis software, and to expand its sales and marketing initiatives.

—Digirad (Nasdaq: [[ticker:DRAD]]), a diagnostic imaging services provider based in Poway, CA, said it acquired certain assets of Memphis, TN-based Telerhythmics, a 24-hour cardiac event monitoring service used by hospitals and physician offices. Digirad CFO Jeffry Keyes said in an e-mail that Digirad paid $3.47 million in cash, and assumed $131,000 in debt. Digirad provides in-office nuclear gamma cameras used in cardiology imaging, ultrasound imaging services, and cardiac event monitoring services to physician practices, hospitals and imaging centers.

—AMN Healthcare Service (NYSE: [[ticker:AHS]]), the San Diego-based provider of healthcare nursing and healthcare staffing services, said it made a $5 million strategic investment in PipelineRx, a San Francisco-based telepharmacy company. PipelineRx uses a

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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.