So far this year four privately held companies have made the transition to trading on the public markets.
By month’s end, five more are anticipated to join the class of 2020 initial public offerings—and four of those are in life sciences,... Read more »
Company news slowed somewhat this week, perhaps as some took the federal Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday away from the office and others recovered from back-to-back meetings and late nights at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. However, a new coronavirus... Read more »
Talking about sex with potential investors? For EvoFem Biosciences CEO Saundra Pelletier, it’s the first item on the docket.
Her company recently submitted Amphora, a non-hormonal contraceptive gel, to the FDA for review. EvoFem (NASDAQ: EVFM)—and the rest of the... Read more »
Halozyme suffered a setback in November when its investigational pancreatic drug failed a Phase 3 clinical trial, but its CEO says the biotech’s drug delivery technology will make the company profitable as early as the second quarter of this year.... Read more »
Perhaps the most talked-about news at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference this week was a new startup that launched with $200 million and an ambitious claim that its first drug would be approved within five years, and 10 in total within... Read more »
We’re excited to announce the first in Xconomy’s new Xcelerating Life Sciences event series convening local communities of innovators, executives, rising pioneers, entrepreneurs, investors, and scientists: Xcelerating Life Sciences San Diego will help you stay at the forefront of San Diego’s... Read more »
[Updated 1/15/2020, 8:51 a.m. See below.] As the nation grapples with the ongoing opioid crisis, an FDA advisory panel on Tuesday unanimously voted against recommending approval of a Nektar Therapeutics painkiller that would add a new compound to the... Read more »
Daré Bioscience launched in 2015 with the aim of assembling a portfolio of novel women’s health products intended to pique interest from major pharmaceutical companies.
Now the San Diego-based company has inked its first deal with Big Pharma, signing an agreement... Read more »
The genetic testing company NeoGenomics has acquired Human Longevity’s oncology division, which provides next-generation sequencing services.
The division of San Diego-based Human Longevity generated approximately $10 million in revenue in 2019—an amount NeoGenomics (NASDAQ: NEO) thinks it can grow by... Read more »
Neurocrine Biosciences is doubling down on epilepsy, striking its second agreement in as many months with a new deal that grants it the option to license an investigational treatment for a rare form of the disease.
The San Diego-based drug developer... Read more »
A letter signed by 215 people involved in the biopharma industry, including CEOs and investors, published Wednesday promised to put the “interests of patients first.”
Six CEOs, including five who run public companies, co-authored the letter. Signatories agreed to what they... Read more »
RNA medicines can treat some diseases by hitting targets otherwise considered “undruggable” by small molecules and biologics, but protecting the nucleic acids from degradation and getting the therapies to where they are needed in the body can be difficult.
San Diego... Read more »
Empirico, a biotech that has developed tools to analyze genomics data and use those insights to identify potential therapeutic targets, has signed a collaboration deal with antisense drug developer Ionis Pharmaceuticals that includes a $10 million equity investment.
The 14-person startup,... Read more »
Cancer drug developer Mirati Therapeutics is beefing up its leadership team as its lead programs advance through human testing.
The San Diego-based company (NASDAQ: MRTX) this week added two executives to its C-suite as part of a strategic effort to... Read more »
When a group of scientists from Amira Pharmaceuticals wanted to start a new biotech after the company’s 2011 acquisition by Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene provided seed funding.
Eventually Celgene kicked in $35 million more for a research collaboration, an equity stake,... Read more »
In the past seven years BioIntervene has been working to develop “ultra-selective” compounds to target an adenosine receptor associated with pain relief.
Now the San Diego-based biotech has $30 million and a chief scientific officer, Charles Cohen, to guide its lead... Read more »
In the week leading up to Christmas, six drugs won FDA approvals. The decisions covered insomnia, migraine, and several different forms of cancer.
The FDA’s final tally for the year totaled 48 new drug approvals. If you’re keeping score, that compares... Read more »
DNA sequencing machine maker Illumina will have to find another way to “read” long pieces of genetic material as well as short stretches, the genomic giant’s bailiwick. Its $1.2 billion proposal to acquire long-read capability by buying rival Pacific Biosciences ended... Read more »
As national politics dominates the news in the final days of the decade, we at Xconomy are wrapping up the year with some big moves by the FDA, including an approval of the first drug OK’d reduce heart risk in patients... Read more »
When it comes to Alzheimer’s disease, Biogen isn’t putting all of its eggs in the same basket. In the latest development of a multi-drug and multi-disease collaboration, the company has licensed an experimental Ionis Pharmaceuticals compound that works in a different... Read more »
About one year ago Illumina agreed to splash out $1.2 billion on Pacific Biosciences, a rival maker of DNA sequencing technology. Now the Federal Trade Commission is looking to block the deal, and says it was meant to steamroll a competitor... Read more »
More than 250 miles above the Earth’s surface aboard the International Space Station, a first-in-kind study of neurodegenerative disease is expected to reveal never-before-seen cell interactions.
The National Stem Cell Foundation (NSCF) is funding the study, which is the result of... Read more »
