There was a flurry of San Diego life sciences news over the past week, but we’ve got it all sorted for you here.
—Politicians sometimes complain about voter apathy, but consider the plight of San Diego’s La Jolla Pharmaceutical. The biotech, which failed to develop a drug for lupus, has been unable to muster enough shareholder votes to put itself out of business—or to approve a proposed merger with Adamis Pharmaceuticals (OTCBB: [[ticker:ADMP]]). In a statement this week, La Jolla Pharmaceutical says only 12 percent of its shareholders returned their proxy cards last week—falling far short of the quorum needed to constitute a valid vote.
—San Diego’s Adventrx Pharmaceuticals (NYSE Amex: [[ticker:ANX]]) says the FDA wants more data from stability testing of its new formulation of vinorelbine, a chemotherapy drug used to treat a variety of cancers, including non-small-cell lung cancer.
—Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:OPTR]]), a San Diego biotech developing an antibiotic for a dangerous hospital infection, raised $51.5 million in a secondary stock offering.
—San Diego’s Novalar was in the news twice in the past week. The San Diego-based biotech struck a deal that gives Sanofi-Aventis exclusive rights to market Novalar’s vasodilator drug phentolamine mesylate (OraVerse) in Germany.
—Novalar was also ordered by the FDA to stop using a misleading patient brochure in its marketing of the drug phentolamine mesylate. Novalar CEO Donna Janson says the
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.
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