San Diego Biotechs Raise Cash for Novel Drugs to Treat Cancers, Broad Disease Spectrum

A number of biotechs and medical device companies in the San Diego area have disclosed funding deals in recent weeks. As I noted last month, San Diego-based ProActa raised about $1.1 million to continue its anti-cancer drug development work. I found some more deals while reviewing filings submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission:

—Auspex Pharmaceuticals of Vista, CA, continues to raise modest amounts of funding in its quest to develop deuterium-based analogs of clinically validated drugs in multiple therapeutic areas. The company says its technology replaces metabolically-sensitive hydrogen atoms with “heavy hydrogen,” a non-radioactive isotope, to create novel therapeutics with “very attractive product profiles.” After raising $3 million in August, a recent SEC filing shows that Auspex has returned to raise $2 million from promissory notes and warrants that can be converted into shares of preferred stock. Auspex, which was founded in 2001, raised almost $13.9 million in a Series B venture round from Thomas, McNerney & Partners, CMEA Ventures, and Costa Verde Capital. The concept is similar to an idea being pursued by Lexington, MA-based Concert Pharmaceuticals.

—Aethlon Medical (OTCBB: [[ticker:AEMD]]) has raised $600,000 from an unnamed investor, according to a recent SEC filing. The investor provided $300,000 in cash and a $300,000 loan to acquire 660,000 shares of Aethlon’s common stock. The San Diego-based company has been developing a blood purification device, the Hemopurifier, as a broad-spectrum therapy against infectious viral pathogens. In October, Aethlon formed a subsidiary, Exosome Sciences. The company says Exosome Sciences will run tests to see if the Hemopurifier also is effective in capturing exosomes that are secreted by solid tumors, lymphomas, and leukemias to suppress the patient’s immune response.

—Tocagen, a San Diego biotech developing gene therapy treatments for terminally ill cancer patients, has raised $3 million by issuing almost 1.6 million shares of preferred stock priced at $1.90 a share, according to a regulatory filing. Tocagen says on its website that its drug development efforts are focused on two deadly types of cancers, glioblastoma multiforme (a type of brain tumor), and malignant melanoma (a type of skin cancer).

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.