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Zenobia Therapeutics, Inspired by Warrior Queen, Focuses on Developing Drug...
Bruce V. Bigelow Zenobia Therapeutics is an example of San Diego’s great biotech circle of life. Vicki Nienaber, Zenobia’s founding president and chief scientist, started the specialized drug...
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Isis Prepares Novel Treatment for Lou Gehrig’s Disease, BrainCells Is...
Bruce V. Bigelow It might be the dog days of summer, but San Diego’s life sciences companies kept up a busy flow of cool news over the past week. Get your update here. —Isis Pharmaceuticals, the...
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Targeted Genetics Survives Brush With Death, Sells Gene Therapy IP to Genzyme...
Luke Timmerman Targeted Genetics needed a lifeline and it got one at the last possible minute. The Seattle-based mainstay of gene therapy, which has been running on fumes for months, has struck an...
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ISB Cuts Deal to Sequence 100 Genomes
Luke Timmerman The Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology and Mountain View, CA-based Complete Genomics said today they are planning to gather full human genome sequences from 100 individuals to...
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Biotech Pioneer Lee Hood: Whole Families Will Get Whole Genomes Sequenced
Luke Timmerman [Updated: 9:20 pm Pacific, 3/10/10 with independent expert comment] Doctors and researchers in the future won’t just want to look at your genome to see how to treat or prevent illness....
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Sangamo Partners With CHDI
Luke Timmerman Sangamo Biosciences (NASDAQ: SGMO), the Richmond, CA-based drug developer, said today it has formed a collaboration with the New York-based CHDI Foundation to develop a new treatment...
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Medivation, Pfizer Fail Huntington’s Test
Luke Timmerman San Francisco-based Medivation (NASDAQ: MDVN) and its partner, New York-based Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) said today that an experimental drug for Huntington’s disease failed in a pivotal...
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Medivation Flunks Huntington’s Trial, Calibra Nabs Venture Cash, Open Source...
Luke Timmerman The open source biology movement is converging on San Francisco today at a conference organized by Sage Bionetworks, and I will be there today listening carefully to find out what it...
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AIDS Drugs Were the Start. Let’s See More FDA Accelerated Approvals
Luke Timmerman There’s been a lot of talk in biotech lately about the need for reforms at the FDA, to make it run faster and more predictably. One idea is taking shape in a bill starting to move...
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Xconomist of the Week: Evan Snyder—Stem Cell Reality Check
Bruce V. Bigelow San Diego Xconomist Evan Snyder has been called a “stem cell revolutionary” and is regarded as a father in the field of stem cell research. When we talked in his office at San Diego’s...
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From One Japanese Backer to Another: Galenea Advances Brain Drugs
Arlene Weintraub When Cambridge, MA-based Galenea wrapped up a five-year, $90 million partnership with Japanese pharma company Otsuka in 2011, CEO Mark Benjamin feared the biotech’s days might be...
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Auspex Raises $25M for Longer-Lasting, Deuterium-Based Drugs
Bruce V. Bigelow At San Diego’s Auspex Pharmaceuticals, CEO Larry Fritz is overseeing a drug development program based on a fairly simple premise: If an FDA-approved small molecule drug is susceptible...
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Roche & Isis Join Forces on Antisense Drug for Huntington’s Disease
Bruce V. Bigelow San Diego’s Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS) and Roche, the Swiss Pharmaceuticals giant) have formed an alliance to develop new treatments for Huntington’s disease, according to a...
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San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Receptos IPO, Isis, Versant & More
Bruce V. Bigelow Some of San Diego’s public life sciences have been buoyed as the stock market has soared to new heights in recent weeks (for the year, the Dow is up 13 percent and the S&P 500...
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Sangamo in Race to Replace Chronic Drug Treatment with Gene Therapies
Bernadette Tansey The Foster City, CA-based biopharmaceutical giant Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD) reaps about $8 billion a year from its daily drug regimens that keep the HIV virus in check. Gilead’s Bay area...
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Numerate Trains Its Drug Design Platform On Huntington’s Disease
Bernadette Tansey The path toward a breakthrough drug often starts with a new insight about the molecular cause of an illness, but only a few of these discoveries lead to new treatments. Steven...
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Sangamo, Biogen Team up to Make Drugs For Blood Disorders
Ben Fidler Sangamo Biosciences has found a second big player willing to place a bet on its zinc finger technology: Cambridge, MA-based Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB). Richmond, CA-based Sangamo (NASDAQ:...
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San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Auspex, Biocept, Halozyme & More
Bruce V. Bigelow There was a certain symmetry in the great circle of life that played out in San Diego’s life sciences industry over the past week, with two IPOs and two buyouts. Here are the details,...
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Neurophage Nabs $17M More to Hunt Down Brain Plaques
Ben Fidler Neurophage has spent years developing a way to break up disease-causing plaques in the brain, based on lessons it learned from a virus that infects bacteria. Today, it raised enough cash to...
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Auspex Shares Soar on Late-Stage Results from Huntington’s Study
Bruce V. Bigelow San Diego-based Auspex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ASPX) says it plans to file a new drug application by mid-2015 after reporting today that its lead drug candidate curbed involuntary...
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