Gilead selling $3.7 billion in notes for Pharmasset buyout

Looking for ways to finance its planned $11 billion acquisition of Pharmasset Inc. , biotech giant Gilead Sciences Inc. said it will sell $3.7 billion worth of bonds.
The four-part issuance consists of $750 million in bonds, due in 2014 and paying 2.4 percent interest, another $700 million at 3.05 percent interest and due in 2016, a third tranche of $1.25 billion 10-year notes at 4.4 percent interest and $1 billion at 5.65 percent interest due in 2041.

Gilead donates $8M of 'black sickness' drug to WHO

Gilead Sciences Inc. will donate 445,000 vials of AmBisome over five years to help the World Health Organization treat more than 50,000 patients with “black fever,” or visceral leishmaniasis.
Based on Gilead's no-profit price through its access program for developing countries, the donation is valued at more than $8 million.

Combo of Genentech's Herceptin, new drug delays spread of breast cancer - study

Combining the experimental Genentech Inc. antibody drug pertuzumab and the breast cancer drug Herceptin with docetaxel chemotherapy translated into metastatic breast cancer patients living more than a half-year longer without the disease progressing, according to results of a trial by the South San Francisco biotech giant.
Patients receiving the three-drug combination, who had received no previous treatment for HER2-positive breast cancer that had spread to other parts of their body, lived a median of 18.5 months without the disease progressing, compared to 12.4 months for patients on only Herceptin and chemo.

FDA panel backs Affymax anemia drug for dialysis patients

A federal advisory panel Wednesday approved Affymax Inc.’s once-a-month anemia drug for kidney dialysis patients.
The 17-member Food and Drug Administration panel of outside experts recommended that the agency approve peginesatide from Palo Alto-based Affymax (NASDAQ: AFFY) and partner Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Two Phase III studies showed that the drug is safe and effective for dialysis patients, but two other late-stage studies found that peginesatide could cause heart problems in kidney patients who weren’t yet on dialysis.
The FDA often follows an advisory panel’s recommendation but isn’t required to do so. The FDA is expected to approve or reject peganesatide by March 27.

CIRM names former iPierian exec as first CFO

The former chief financial officer of stem cell company iPierian Inc. was hired for the same job at California’s stem cell research funding agency.
Matthew Plunkett, who also has worked as a biopharma investment banker at Oppenheimer & Co. and predecessor CIBC World Markets, was named the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s first chief financial officer. He worked at iPierian in South San Francisco from August 2009 to this past April, when he, along with much of the management team and a couple of board members, exited the company.

UCSF, GE Healthcare program seeks to boost number of disease-fighting cord blood cells

A group of UCSF scientists will seek chemical compounds that can be added to blood-forming stem cells and progenitor cells in cord blood to increase their population and boost cord blood treatments for adult patients.
The $841,000, three-year program, funded by GE Healthcare Life Sciences’ cell technologies unit and the University of California’s Office of the President, initially will screen about 120,000 chemicals to find those that could expand the population of hematopoietic, or blood-forming, stem cells and progenitor cells.
The work is important because cord blood — a rich source of stem cells and progenitor cells — often doesn’t provide a large enough number of stem cells to treat adults with life-threatening diseases like lymphoma, leukemia or sickle cell anemia.

Science Exchange raises $1.5 million

Science Exchange, the online research marketplace launched earlier this year out of the Y Combinator incubator program, raised $1.5 million in a round led by Andreesen Horowitz.

Gilead HIV booster passes Phase III test

An experimental HIV therapy booster from Gilead Sciences Inc. — a key part of Gilead’s experimental four-in-one, once-a-day Quad pill — met the goal of a Phase III trial, the company said Monday.
The booster, named cobicistat, showed in the 96-week study that it was at least on par with ritonvair, or Norvir, from Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT), Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD) said.

Gilead cancer strategy relies heavily on Yale collaboration

Gilead Sciences Inc. is best known for combining HIV-fighting drugs for AIDS patients, but it may draw on that experience as it pursues a two-pronged strategy in cancer.
After a decade away from the oncology space, Gilead’s buyouts of CGI Pharmaceuticals, Arresto Biosciences and Calistoga Pharmaceuticals over the past 18 months allow the Foster City-based biotech giant (NASDAQ: GILD) to hurdle some of the early cancer drug development challenges.
Given less attention, at least after the deal's initial announcement in March, is the company’s collaboration with heavy-hitting cancer researchers at Yale University. That $40 million, four-year effort is sequencing various types of tumors to identify new targets.

Manufacturing problems cause shortage of Theravance-developed superbug drug

Manufacturing problems at a third-party manufacturer have led to “critical” shortages of the serious skin infection drug Vibativ, developed by South San Francisco-based Theravance Inc.
Astellas Pharma US, which is marketing the drug, told wholesalers and distributors Friday that no new patients should be started on Vibativ, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday by Theravance (NASDAQ: THRX).
Vibativ, a once-daily injectable drug to treat Gram-positive bacteria, including the MRSA “superbug,” was approved in the United States in September 2009. It won European approval this past September.

Genentech settles Rituxan whisteblower suit for $20M

Genentech Inc. will pay $20 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit around off-label marketing of the cancer-fighting drug Rituxan.
The settlement, completed last month and first reported by Drug Industry Daily, will net $5.7 million for John Underwood, who was a senior manager of sales development from the start of Genentech’s oncology franchise in 1997.

You're so vain: Baby boomers, tech and lower risk for investors pump up aesthetics, vanity market

Kerry Pope wants to liberate women — and make some money in the process.
Pope’s Palo Alto company, Viveve Inc., is launching a product that promises to tighten vaginal tissue stretched by childbirth and return women’s sex lives to pre-child days. The half-hour radiofrequency technology procedure, already used to tighten saggy facial skin, allows women to return home or to work with nary anyone else the wiser for it.
“It’s all about her,” Pope said.
It also is about opportunity.
Vain baby boomers looking to suck, heat, squeeze or freeze their way toward the fountain of youth are pumping up a $10 billion-a-year market. Lower regulatory risk for companies and investors, a new wave of technologies and consumers willing to pay out of pocket are fattening up the industry as well.
Call it the aesthetics, personal care or vanity market, but one thing is sure: Even in a tough economy, a cadre of Bay Area companies with science-backed, minimally invasive methods for smoothing wrinkles, removing love handles or even restoring couples’ sex lives are tapping consumer lust for younger days.

Amyris, Total expand joint biofuels venture

Renewable fuels and chemicals company Amyris Inc. and French energy giant Total have expanded their partnership to produce renewable diesel products through a joint venture, to which Total will contribute an additional $105 million on top of the $180 million the companies already have committed, according to financial filings.
The 50-50 joint venture has the exclusive rights to produce and market renewable diesel and jet fuel worldwide. It also has a non-exclusive agreement to develop and market other non-fuel products. The venture will begin operations in the first quarter of 2012.

Transcept could land $90M after Purdue opts for sleep drug

Purdue Pharma LP exercised its option for U.S. rights to the middle-of-the-night sleep drug Intermezzo, developed by Richmond’s Transcept Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Transcept (NASDAQ: TSPT), which lost $30 million in potential Purdue payments after the Food and Drug Administration twice rejected the drug, now could receive up to $90 million in milestone payments.
The FDA finally approved Intermezzo last month. Purdue had until Dec. 8 to exercise its option on the lozenge, which is designed to help people go back to sleep for up to four hours after waking up in the middle of the night.

BioMarin buys back patents for rare disease drug for $81M

BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. bought the intellectual property at the core of the drug Naglazyme for $81 million cash, according to terms of a buyback deal disclosed Wednesday.
The Novato-based company (NASDAQ: BMRN), known for developing drugs to treat rare lysosomal storage diseases, said it paid the cash upfront to SA Pathology, a unit of the Central Adelaide Local Health Network in Australia. The patents are related to the purified form of Naglazyme and the method of using the enzyme to treat mucolpolysaccharidosis VI, or MPS VI.