Pearl Therapeutics grabs $65M in VC funding, moves COPD drug toward Phase III trials

Its main competition is seeking approval of a treatment for the lung disease COPD, but the leaders of Pearl Therapeutics Inc., and investors who just ponied up $65 million to push the company’s own COPD drug into Phase III trials, are unbowed.

Redwood City-based Pearl said Tuesday that current investors 5AM Ventures, Clarus Ventures and New Leaf Venture Partners participated in the Series D round led by Vatera Healthcare Partners.
Pearl will use the cash to start a Phase III program for its lead drug candidate, PT-003, for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. That treatment is a combination of glycopyrrolate, which is a long-acting muscarinic antagonist, or LAMA, and formoterol fumarate, a long-acting beta-2 agonist, or LABA.

Pain drug developer Adynxx enrolls first trial

Adynxx founder Julien Mamet.

Adynxx Inc., led by a team that has built and sold three other Bay Area drug developers over the past decade, said Tuesday that it has completed enrollment in an early-stage drug trial that could take the pain out of surgery. The 30-person, Phase I study is the first in-human test of AYX-1, the San Francisco company’s experimental preventative treatment for post-surgical pain. The study of healthy volunteers is designed to test the drug’s safety. Adynxx leaders expect to move the drug into a 90- to 100-patient Phase II efficacy trial in the fourth quarter.

One-on-One with Deborah Bellush of Biotech Partners

Sometimes longevity says more than anything. Take Biotech Partners, the East Bay program started 19 years ago to steer at-risk high school students into Bay Area life sciences jobs.
But Biotech Partners is getting some important recognition as well. It was one of eight programs recognized recently with the Innovations in Life Sciences prize, sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and backed by the Carnegie Foundation. The prize is designed to recognize programs that promote life sciences partnerships between scientists and science educators at middle schools and high schools.
The award is part of Ashoka Changemakers’ emphasis on so-called STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — education. It comes at a time when Bay Area educators and companies are pushing for more attention to STEM to provide a next-generation workforce for high-tech, biotech and cleantech jobs.
Biotech Partners, started as part of an agreement between Bayer HealthCare and the City of Berkeley, will receive $10,000.
I spoke with Deborah Bellush, the executive director of Biotech Partners, shortly after the nonprofit announced Wednesday that it had won the award.

Peter Maag exits as Novartis Diagnostics president, interim named

Peter Maag, the Emeryville-based president and global head of Novartis Diagnostics for two years, is no longer with the company.
Carsten Schroeder, who has been Novartis Diagnostics’ vice president of commercial operations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was named as Maag’s replacement.

New Cerus boss looks to expand blood franchise in U.S., abroad

Cerus Corp. is out for blood, but it really needs money.
The Concord company (NASDAQ: CERS) has long been a player in the blood-testing field. Its Intercept system, developed with the help of Baxter International Inc. (NYSE: BAX) and approved in Europe in 2002, makes transfusions safer by inactivating a killer lineup of pathogens — viruses, bacteria and parasites — that otherwise can enter the blood supply undetected.
But after some missteps, Cerus is back, leaner and focused, again, on expanding into the more-lucrative red blood cell testing business.

Sheep help NovaBay target sinusitis

NovaBay Pharmaceuticals Inc. is counting on sheep sinuses to shepherd one of its experimental drugs into flocks of patients and investors.
NVC-422 is one of the Emeryville drug developer’s (AMEX: NBY) so-called Aganocide compounds, designed to kill bacteria quickly and effectively but without the bacteria building up resistance over time. The compound is being studied in everything from the skin infection impetigo to urinary catheter blockage to eye care, though Novartis’ Alcon eye care unit returned rights to the drug this summer.
But recent findings from an Australian study could cause NovaBay to put more attention on sinusitis.

PDL wins round in royalty suit against Genentech, Roche

A Nevada judge denied two motions from Genentech Inc. and parent company Roche to dismiss a PDL BioPharma lawsuit centering on royalties from a 2003 deal, PDL said.
Judge David Hardy also dismissed a claim by PDL (NASDAQ: PDLI), which was based in Redwood City before moving late 2008 to Incline Village, Nev., that Genentech breached an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
The rulings are the latest in a court battle following an August 2010 letter from South San Francisco-based Genentech that claimed that PDL’s technique for humanizing an antibody does not apply to drugs Roche sells in Europe.

Bayer: Blame Emeryville plant closing on larger cost pressures, not Bay Area

It’s MS, Emeryville, not you.
That’s the drum Bayer HealthCare is beating as it shifts production of its multiple sclerosis drug Betaseron from Emeryville to a European contract manufacturer over the next two years.
Who’s to blame? Surely not Emeryville or the 540 employees of the East Bay facility, said Bayer spokesman Sreejit Mohan. Instead, health system reform worldwide and an increasingly competitive market for MS drugs are putting pressure on Bayer and other MS drug companies.

Bayer closing Emeryville plant, shedding 540 jobs

Bayer HealthCare will ditch 540 jobs in Emeryville as it shifts production of its blockbuster multiple sclerosis treatment over two years to a contract manufacturer.

Fluidigm to get more milestone cash in Novartis diagnostics deal

Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics will pay $320,000 more to Fluidigm Corp. if the South San Francisco company hits a milestone in its development of a non-invasive prenatal diagnostic test.
Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, whose diagnostics arm is based in Emeryville, now could make $3.32 million in milestone payments, according to amended deal outlined in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday by Fluidigm.

MIT snags UCSF synthetic biology expert Chris Voigt - 3rd high-profile loss for UCSF

One of UCSF’s brightest young scientists and a key member of the Bay Area’s emerging synthetic biology community is heading east.

Chris Voigt, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco, described by The Scientist as "biology's toy maker," will join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in July. He will be an associate professor of biological engineering and co-director of a center for synthetic biology.

Revamped Novartis in Emeryville expanding off Chiron blood-screening work

As Novartis hires, construction could follow

Novartis moving infectious disease unit HQ from Mass. to Emeryville