Join SoCalBioJoin well-known entrepreneur Alfred Mann and other SoCalBio leaders to promote the biotech and device industries in the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area for job creation and overall economic growth. |  |
Cut the Cost of Doing Business | Utilize Iron Mountain for Document Management, Storage and Shredding |
Looking for Vendors to Help You With HR Issues  | |
Available for LeaseWet Lab Space House Ear Institute (Los Angeles) offers several thousand square feet of laboratory and laboratory support space for short to medium-term lease at competitive rents. This is ideal for startups and early-stage companies. Learn more |
Climate Change and Business: The ROI for Going Green
May 7-8, 2009
Rady Center for Executive Development
UC San Diego (San Diego, CA) |
Momentum Weekend for Women in Life Sciences June 11-14 2009 Keck Graduate Institute
Learn more |
| Recommended Events MDMA Annual MeetingJune 1 - 3  -------------------------------------- | 
Register Now |
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| | Thanks to Lead SoCalBio Sponsor | |
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| New SoCalBio Members |  Sofie Biosciences(Culver City) Led by CEO Patrick Phelps (photo right), Sofie Biosciences is developing an innovative discovery platform to rapidly identify and evaluate novel Positron Emission Tomography probes for molecular imaging of cancer and inflammation ... Learn more  Olmstead Williams Communications
(OWC)
(Los Angeles) Led by President & CEO Tracy Williams (photo right), OWC Offers full-service public relations services for businesses in the healthcare and life sciences, technology, legal, accounting and other professional services sectors ....Learn more |
| RSVP Now for SoCalBio Events | Upcoming Business Mixers  May 28, 4:00 - 7:30 pmSoCalBio Networking Forum in Los Angeles ... RSVP
June 25, 7:00 - 9:30 am SoCalBio Networking Forum in Orange County ... RSVP
Upcoming Workshops June 12,
7:30 am - 5:30 pm Regulatory Best Practices Workshop: FDA Audit Preparedness (LA Chamber of Commerce)
Learn what the latest compliance trends in recent FDA and State of California inspections from device, pharma and IVD experts. ... More info .... RSVP now
June 16, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm  Workshop on
SBIR, STTR and Other Types of Government Funding Opportunities for Life Science Companies (KGI, Claremont)
Attend this SoCalBio Workshop to sharpen your grant-writing skills and learn how to tap various government funding opportunities from the NIH and DoD ...More info ....RSVP now
Upcoming Executive Luncheons and Roundtable Discussions  Only For Regenerative Medicine Company Executives
Date: June 19, 11 to 2 Location: Los Angeles RSVP: By Invitation Only
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| From the Lab Bench | UCLA Engineers Design the World's Fastest Camera to Document, Diagnose Biological Activity  The new imager is developed by a team led by Bahram Jalali (photo right). It operates by capturing each picture with an ultrashort laser pulse - a flash of light only a billionth of a second long. It then converts each pulse to a serial data stream that resembles the data in a fiber optic network rather than the signal coming out of a camera. Using a technique known as amplified dispersive Fourier transform, these laser pulses, each containing an entire picture, are amplified and simultaneously stretched in time to the point that they are slow enough to be captured with an electronic digitizer. This technique can be used in, among other things, flow cytometry to capture malignant cells .... Read more California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
(CIRM) Funds UCI Alzheimer's Stem Cell Research  UC Irvine neuroscientists Frank LaFerla (photo right) and colleagues were awarded $3.6 million from CIRM toward the development of an Alzheimer's disease therapy involving human neural stem cells. In all today, CIRM's governing board approved $67.7 million in Early Translational awards for 15 projects at California institutions. The awards are intended to move promising basic stem cell research toward the clinic ... Read more USC Teams with Rhenovia Pharma on Computer Modeling of L-glutamate Two USC faculty members -- Michel Baudry (middle), a professor in the USC College department of biological sciences and Theodore Berger (left) of the USC Viterbi School's department of biomedical engineering, have been awarded a biomedical research partnership by the National Institutes of Health to study the amino acid behind numerous diseases. This research project will be conducted in collaboration with Serge Bischoff (right), the CEO of the French company, Rhenovia
Pharma. The object of their research is a single neurotransmitter, the amino acid L-glutamate, which regulates biological systems ... Read more |
| Patenting | ImmunoCellular Therapeutics Granted Monoclonal Antibody Technology Patent
"This patent provides additional strength to the growing intellectual property position that we are building around our antibody technologies for the detection and the treatment of cancer," stated Manish Singh, Ph.D. (photo right), president and chief executive officer of
IMUC (Woodland Hills, CA). "We are actively exploring potential partnering opportunities to enable us to bring these promising technologies through clinical testing and commercialization" ....Read more
| | Grant Funding | |
Simulations Plus of
Lancaster, Calif. Wins Phase II SBIR Grant from NCI
 The $525,0000 grant is for Simulations
Plus to further develop the capabilities of its ADMET Predictor
software product. ADMET Predictor is a software research tool used
by pharmaceutical scientists to estimate absorption, distribution,
metabolism, excretion, and toxicity properties of pharmaceutical
compounds and to build advanced mathematical models.... Read more
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Expansion |
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Plus Diagnostics Opens Shop in
Laguna Hills, Plans to Hire 175 People by 2010
 Lakewood, N.J.-based Plus Diagnostics runs
specialized tests for doctors that help them manage various types of
cancer, including prostate, colon, bladder, skin and breast. It plans to
add tests for leukemia and lymphoma in September. Plus opened its Laguna Hills lab with 25
workers and is hiring. Employment should grow to 40 by the third
quarter and to 150 to 175 by the end of 2010, said David Pauluzzi,
president and chief operating officer... Read more
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| Personnel | Patrick Soon-Shiong Steps Down from Abraxis Bioscience to Lead a New Spinoff Called Abraxis Health  Leon O. Moulder Jr. has been appointed Abraxis BioScience's chief executive, and also will hold the titles of vice chairman and president.
Soon-Shiong (photo right), founder of
Abraxis, will remain Abraxis BioScience's chairman and become chief executive and chairman of Abraxis Health, which was formed in January to develop experimental treatments.... Read more |
| Clinical Trials | Los Angeles-Based Cougar Biotechnology Initiates Phase III Trial of CB7630
(Abiraterone Acetate) in Chemotherapy-Naïve Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer Patients
 Alan H.
Auerbach, Chief Executive Officer and President of Cougar Biotechnology (photo right), said, "Initiation of this Phase III trial of CB7630 in chemotherapy-naïve prostate cancer patients represents an important milestone in the clinical development of CB7630. As these patients continue to represent a market that is underserved with current treatments, we are pleased to initiate the COU-AA-302 Phase III trial in this patient population" .... Read more |
| Personalized Medicine | Response Genetics Expands Proprietary ResponseDX: Lung and ResponseDX: Colon Genetic Tests to Include Additional Patented Biomarkers Associated With Chemotherapy Response "We are pleased with the market acceptance of the ResponseDX tests, which is now at a run rate of more than 700 tests ordered per quarter, an approximate 40 percent increase over the previous quarter," said Kathleen
Danenberg, Response Genetics president and CEO. "As a company, Response Genetics is committed to expanding its existing ResponseDX tests and developing new ones as we identify genes that correlate with therapeutic benefit. The addition of TS and EGFR to our
ResponseDX: Lung and ResponseDX: Colon genetic tests, respectively, should increase their applicability by giving physicians even more information about which cancer treatments are most likely to benefit their patients" .... Read more |
| Recession Blues | Allergan Profit Falls; Botox, Device Sales Lower
 Botox revenue was affected by the strong dollar, which lowers the value of overseas sales. As in recent quarters, Botox sales also fell victim to the economic downturn, which has deterred people from elective cosmetic procedures not covered by health insurance. Allergan's recent woes are compounded by a new, strong safety warning required on Botox and competition in the United States from a similar drug, Dysport ... Read more |
| About SoCalBio |  SoCalBio membership links you to partners, contract manufacturers, regulatory and legal experts, and policy makers. The organization's programs help emerging biotech and medical device companies grow. Membership is affordable -- as low as $500 -- and offers access to networking opportunities, advocacy, discounts through our group purchasing program group purchasing program and other benefits you simply can't find elsewhere ... Join SoCalBio |
| Editor: Ahmed A. Enany Southern California Biomedical Council (SoCalBio) |
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Visit the Southern California Biomedical Council at the California Life Science Industry Alliance's Booth at the
