Minding Your Business

CARLSBAD —- ViaSat said Thursday it has signed two contracts with African satellite operator RascomStar-Qaf, to supply satellite systems. The systems will carry telephone and data services across Africa, which RascomStar-Qaf said will provide affordable telecommunications throughout the continent. Deliveries are scheduled to begin this year and continuing into 2011.

LA JOLLA —- Intellikine Inc. said Wednesday it has raised $51 million in preferred stock financing. The company is developing small molecule drugs for cancer, inflammation and autoimmune diseases.

Novartis Bioventures Ltd. led the financing round. New investors were U.S. Venture Partners, Biogen Idec and FinTech Global Capital.

The investment consists of $28.5 million and up to an additional $22.5 million if performance milestones are met.

Digital music startup Slacker Inc. has raised $9.8 million from an equity sale, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Slacker has no comment on the sale, said Anders Steele, a Slacker spokesman.
Slacker sells a portable music player that downloads music according to preset “stations” reflecting user tastes.
SoCalTech, a Web site that tracks investments, reported the transaction on Wednesday, the date of its filing.

Frank H. Shu, a professor of physics at UC San Diego, has been awarded the $1 million Shaw Prize for his research in astronomy.

Shu, a resident of Solana Beach, was honored for his stellar research into the beginnings of solar systems and stars. His theory explained how vast magnetic fields and turbulence worked with gravity to bring together thinly dispersed matter to form stars and planets. Previous theories relied on gravity to explain the process.

For example, the spiral shape of galaxies and the rings of Saturn are explained by Shu’s work. The shapes were created by density waves as matter aggregated billions of years ago, according to a theory he co-developed in the 1960s.

The award, sometimes called the “Nobel Prize of the East,” goes to scientists who have made exceptional discoveries in astronomy, mathematical sciences or life sciences and medicine. Hong Kong media mogul Run Run Shaw established the award, administered by the Shaw Prize Foundation in Hong Kong.

Read the rest of this entry »

Reporter Zach Fox is no longer with the North County Times, having relocated to the East Coast. “On the Realside” may resume as other reporters cover real estate issues in North San Diego and Southwest Riverside counties. In the meantime, you may send your real estate and business news tips to business@nctimes.com.

UCSD contest gives fledgling company a lift

In recessions, most businesses retrench and focus on the immediate future.  But the drive to innovate means there’s always new companies forming and new products being developed by entrepreneurs. Their energy and imagination creates new jobs, making up for those lost by traditional industries. So I am launching
This new column in the North County Times focuses on the world of innovation and entrepreneurship. It will be in the paper later, but the Internet-wise like you can see it here first.

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Easy money encourages a proliferation of new companies. But in a recession, scarce money makes investors a lot more selective. To get funded, you’ve got to be really good.

Biological Dynamics, a new biotechnology company, faces that challenge. It has invented a cancer detection device that rapidly extracts cancer “biomarkers”, molecules that indicate the presence of cancer, from whole blood.
While the idea sounds impressive, the cancer diagnostic field has lots of competition. Also the company’s founders aren’t the experienced veterans investors prefer. They’re graduate students at UC San Diego, where they developed the technology.
The company’s first-place win for its business plan in the UCSD Entrepreneur Challenge may open some doors for the newly-minted entrepreneurs. Biological Dynamics brought home a $40,000 prize. Second and third-place winners got $20,000 and $10,000. Read the rest of this entry »

Three San Diego County biotechs have received venture funding, reports SoCalTech, a tracker of venture funding in the Southern California area. They are:

–  Farallon Biosciences Inc., of Encinitas, which raised $4 million

– Medsphere Systems, of Carlsbad, which raised a total of $3.1 million, in two fundings, $1.9 million and $1.2 million.

– Tioga Pharmaceuticals, of San Diego, which raised $1.9 million

SoCal Tech said these fundings were picked up through regulatory filings, they were not announced.

Ophthonix, a Vista-based maker of high-tech eyeglass lenses, said Tuesday it has raised $25.9 million from a group of venture capital investors.
The company said the money will help it continue rolling out its Z-View Aberrometer and iZon High Resolution Lens. It can be reached at www.izonlens.com.
The iZon lens is made to minimize optical aberrations that can impair vision quality, especially in environments with glare, low light, or low contrast. Customers get a prescription reading through Ophthonix’ Aberrometer.
Investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Enterprise Partners; DAG Ventures; Gund Investment Corp.; InterWest Partners; Trex Enterprises and Wasatch Advisors’ Cross Creek Capital Fund.

President Barack Obama’s draft of new rules for funding embryonic stem cell research will interfere with important work in finding disease treatments, says Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica-based consumer advocate group.

The group has often been critical of California’s $3 billion stem cell research program. But in its Wednesday statement, Consumer Watchdog endorsed changes proposed by the program, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM, along with the Interstate Alliance on Stem Cell Research.

The problem, according to Consumer Watchdog, is that Obama’s new rules conflict with funding guidelines President Bush enacted on Aug. 9, 2001. So about 20 lines of embryonic stem cells developed under the Bush guidelines cannot be funded under the Obama guidelines, proposed under Obama’s March 9, 2009, executive order.

One issue is Obama’s requirement that federally funded stem cell lines be derived from embryos whose donors were informed in detail about the commercial potential of this research, and that they would not get any monetary benefit. But some of the Bush-approved lines came from donors who were given less detailed information that omitted the commercial potential.

It makes sense to adopt the new guidelines from now on, but is unfair to impose them retroactively, said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s stem cell project director.

The draft regulations are available by clicking here.

Comments to the draft regulations can be made online by clicking here.

CIRM’s comments are here. (in PDF).

The Interstate Alliance’s comments are here. (also in PDF).

Just got a survey by HomeGain, a company in Emeryville, that interviewed 1,150 real estate agents and other professionals. One interesting tidbit was that the Realtors think their clients, both buyers and sellers, have become more realistic about prices and are starting to understand market prices.

But most interesting to me was question six:

In the next six months, do you think the values of homes in your market will:

Stay the same, increase or decrease?

National: 49 percent said stay the same, 22 percent said increase and 29 percent said decrease. That means 71 percent of the real estate professionals surveyed thinks home prices have bottomed or are already recovering.

In the west region, the breakdown was: 54 percent said same, 20 percent said increase and 26 percent said decrease. So real estate agents in the West are even more confident the bottom is here.