West Coast Biotech Roundup: Tandem, Pathway Genomics, Denali & More

Wave Watching in Santa Barbara (Creative Commons image by Damian Gadal)

Now that Labor Day is over, the innovation-driven life sciences editors at Xconomy can pass along the really important news—Billboard magazine’s final Songs of the Summer chart. As you may know, Billboard tracks the most popular ear candy from Memorial Day through Labor Day—and the official 2015 “Song of Summer” is…Jamaican singer OMI’s version of “Cheerleader.”

Parental warning: It’s got a trumpet, a conga beat, a piano—and it is really, really (gack!) sweet.

If it’s too sweet, we’ve got your antidote below: A piquant selection of Xconomy-curated new product introductions, financing deals, regulatory advances, and executive hires. There’s even an item about Otonomy, a biopharmaceutical advancing new therapies for the inner ear.

—San Diego’s Tandem Diabetes Care (NASDAQ: [[ticker:TNDM]]) shares leaped Wednesday by almost 10 percent, or $1.15 a share, in heavy trading volume after the company said the FDA has approved its t:slim G4 insulin pump. Tandem says its new insulin pump is the first to feature a smartphone-like touch screen that displays continuous glucose monitoring and insulin delivery activity so users can make better-informed decisions about managing their diabetes.

—San Diego’s AnaptysBio plans to raise as much as $86 million through an initial public offering. The company was founded in 2005 to develop antibody-based drugs used to treat severe allergies and other disorders, but has yet to move a program into clinical trials. At a time when the market is volatile, AnaptysBio also is one of dozens of biotechs racing to complete an IPO.

—Kona Medical of Bellevue, WA, revealed in a regulatory filing that it has raised $10 million, and intends to raise as much as $22 million through a combination of debt and equity financing. The firm is developing ultrasound-based technology for imaging and treating severe high blood pressure by non-invasive kidney nerve ablation.

—San Diego-based Pathway Genomics, which ran afoul of federal regulators when it tried to sell personal genetic tests in 2010, is today launching a pair of DNA screening tests designed for early cancer detection and monitoring. The diagnostics company says its tests can detect DNA mutations in a blood sample that are associated with certain cancer types. Pathway says one screening test is intended for

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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.