San Diego’s life sciences newsmakers must have been over compensating, after slacking off last week. This week we have deals, fundings, comings, and goings—not to mention Luke scoops No. 1 and 2—and our summary begins now.
—Infinity Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, MA, could pay San Diego-based Intellikine as much as $488.5 million in various types of payments under a global drug development and commercialization deal revealed last week. As much as $450 million depends on whether Intellikine can win regulatory approval for two anti-cancer drug candidates and get them to the marketplace.
—UC San Diego Health Sciences and its Clinical and Translational Research Institute got a five-year, $37.2 million grant from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR). The funding is intended to boost what’s known as “translational science,” which encompasses the concept of rapidly translating lab research into new and effective therapies.
—Luke scoop No. 1: Ambrx CEO Steve Kaldor, who joined the biotech startup three years ago, quietly left the company at the end of June. The company did not issue a statement about the executive departure, but a spokeswoman for Ambrx confirmed Kaldor was no longer with the company. The spokeswoman added that Peter Schultz, a renowned chemist, Ambrx founder, and a member of its board, is expected to offer more advice.
—Speaking of Peter Schultz, Luke also learned
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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