SiliconBeat

For those of you tracking the growing numbers of huge deals between the Bay Area’s formidable array of biotech companies and those gargantuan drug firms known as Big Pharma, here’s yet another:

Portola Pharmaceuticals of South San Francisco and New Jersey-based drug powerhouse Merck announced Thursday that they will collaborate on developing Portola’s anticoagulant drug candidate, betrixaban.

The payoff for Portola: a cool $50 million initially, with the possibility of $420 million more if certain milestones are met for getting the drug onto the market. In addition, Portola could earn double-digit royalties on worldwide sales of the drug, assuming the government approves its commercialization..

When Roche first began maneuvering to take complete control of Genentech, the air was thick with speculation that the Swiss drug giant’s plans would force out some of the South San Francisco company’s top talent.

Sure enough, upon completing the deal last month, Roche announced that Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Genentech’s president of product development, would give up that job midyear and thereafter be an adviser.

But Desmond-Hellmann has landed on her feet, though at somewhat of a pay cut. On Thursday was named chancellor of the University of California at San Francisco, effective Aug. 3.

A former medical intern and assistant professor at the university, she will earn $450,000 a year as chancellor. Her compensation at Genentech included $725,666 in base pay and $1.3 million in incentives other than stock-based compensation, according to UCSF.

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The $1.4 billion deal that Foster-City based Gilead Science’s announced March 12 to buy CV Therapeutics of Palo Alto has triggered a class-action shareholder lawsuit.

The legal action, which CV Therapeutics disclosed today in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was filed March 19 in Santa Clara County Superior Court by a group called Superior Partners. It accuses CV Therapeutics and its board of failing in their fiduciary duty to stockholders.

Among other claims, the suit alleges that CV Therapeutics’ board limited the number of potential buyers for the company and had a conflict of interest  because they will receive monetary compensation from the sale.

CV Therapeutics denied the claims.

Genitope, the beleaguered Fremont biopharmaceutical that halted development of its experimental MyVax treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma last March after the Food and Drug Administration said at least one more clinical trial was needed, saw its largest shareholder sell off its 8.1 million stake in the company for $1 on Wednesday, according to a regulatory filing made today.

CPMG, the Dallas-based investment firm, said in a filing Friday that it sold all Read the rest of this entry »

Aryx Therapeutics, the Fremont biopharamaceutical whose shares were slammed last July when Procter & Gamble pulled out of a partnership in developing Aryx’s drug to treat chronic constipation and abdominal pain, said today that it had raised $21.6 million through a private placement of about 9.6 million shares, along with the sale of warrants good on a potential 2.9 million additional shares.

The purchase price for the new shares was pegged at Read the rest of this entry »

XenoPort of Santa Clara and its partner said Monday they withdrew their new drug application for Solzira, its time-released treatment of moderate-to-severe restless drug syndrome after the Food and Drub Administration asked for modifications to a study.

The news sent shares of XenoPort down Read the rest of this entry »

AP Pharma, the Redwood City specialty pharmaceutical company, has begun rationing its resources to ensure its survival “in response to the deterioration of the overall economic environment and the financial markets”, the company said in a release early Wednesday.

The steps include Read the rest of this entry »

StemCells (Nasdaq:STEM), the Palo Alot biotech company, said Thursday that preclinical results for its product candidate HuCNS-SC, derived from human neural stem cells, were able to protect the retina from progressive degeneration when transplanted into lab rats.

“The HuCNS-SC cell has proven to have very robust survival, preserving vision in our rat model at time points beyond six months,” said Raymond Lund, a researcher and professor at the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University. “These data are very encouraging and suggest cell-based therapies for retinal degeneration can be a viable treatment approach.”

Shares of StemCells rose as much as 22 cents, or 22 percent, in Thursday trading after its news was released.

In a move to preserve cash, Maxygen said Wednesday it plans to cut its staff by 30 percent in the first quarter next year, a move that will leave it with some 65 employees when it is completed. The Redwood City biotechnology company said it will stage staggered terminations during the quarter beginning in January in both its operational and general-and-administrative departments. The company said it would provide “outplacement support and a severance package for each affected employee.”

Maxygen has also “retained Read the rest of this entry »

Affymetrix founder and chief executive Stephen P.A. Fodor (pictured) “will begin to transfer his CEO responsibilities to Kevin M. King, president of Affymetrix,” the company announced Wednesday afternoon. Fodor will assume a new role as full-time executive chairman of the company’s board. King will take over the top job on New Year’s Day.

The announcement comes on the heels of preliminary results released last week for its most recent quarter that estimated sales of about Read the rest of this entry »