We Got Deals: Financings Breathe New Life Into Local Life Sciences Companies

We turned up some recent funding deals for several San Diego life sciences, including venture funding for a medical device startup, and financing deals for one company developing anti-cancer drugs and another developing medical diagnostics. Here’s a rundown of what I found:

—Access Scientific, a San Diego-based medical device startup, has collected more than $2.6 million in a secondary venture round that aims to raise a total of more than $2.9 million, according to a recent regulatory filing. The company moved to San Diego after it was formed in New York two years ago by David Geliebter, managing partner of Carrot Capital Healthcare Ventures. He had licensed core technology from Yale University and other patent holders for a faster, safer, and easier vascular insertion device. Access says its “Wand” is designed to reduce the risks associated with inserting a small flexible tube (cannula) into blood vessels. Geliebter also assembled the startup’s management team, most of who had previously worked with Venetec International, a San Diego medical device company acquired in 2006 for $166 million. Access, which raised $5.5 million in 2008, identifies San Diego serial entrepreneur Jim Sweeney, CEO of PatientSafe Solutions, as an investor. ASI Investors, an affiliate of private equity firm Wasserstein & Co. also is an investor, and a presumed investor, RLH Enterprises, has a representative on its board of directors.

—San Diego-based Cylene Pharmaceuticals, an anti-cancer drug developer, has raised $6.1 million in a round that targets $14 million in debt, options, and equity, according to a recent regulatory filing. The biotech has raised a total of $77 million since it was founded more than a decade ago. Cylene raised the largest portion of that—$44 million—more than three years ago in a Series C financing co-led by HBM BioVentures (Cayman) and Lilly Ventures. Previous investors include Sanderling Ventures, Novartis BioVenture Fund, RCT BioVentures West, IngleWood Ventures, Coastview Capital, BioVentures Investors, Mitsui Venture Partners, Viterbi Group, Celgene, and Morningside Technologies.

—Ridge Diagnostics, a San Diego medical diagnostics startup previously known as Precision BioLaboratory, has raised $577,000 in an intended $3 million round of debt, options, and securities, according to a regulatory filing. Ridge says it tests blood samples, using diagnostic assays and a proprietary library of biomarkers to analyze and diagnose Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Ridge was founded in 2006, and received initial funding from a National Science Foundation grant and a $250,000 strategic growth loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. (The company’s operations were divided between San Diego and Research Triangle Park, NC, at the time.) The company also has received investment funding from Hale BioPharma Ventures and KI Investment Holdings.

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.