Dr. Kim Lamon, chief scientific officer of Costa Mesa-based drug maker Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, is readying to leave the company at the end of June.
Lamon also is Valeant’s president of research and development. The company hasn’t named replacements for the positions.
Valeant said that before Lamon leaves, he would help complete late-stage testing of Viramidine, Valeant’s hepatitis C drug that’s had some mixed results in earlier trials.
Viramidine’s struggles have led some analysts to criticize Valeant for spending money on what they regard as a losing cause.
Investors smacked Valeant’s shares by 14% in late March when the company said trials for the drug weren’t as successful as expected.
At least one analyst believes Valeant needs to snuff out Viramidine and move on.
“In our opinion, (the trial) is a failure and the drug is dead,” said Andrew McDonald of ThinkEquity Partners LLC.
McDonald is a longtime critic of Valeant’s Viramidine effort because of its development costs.
In early April, Valeant announced a restructuring. The drug maker said it plans to focus on developing Viramidine, retigabine and Infergen.
The company also said it would cut selling and administrative costs, reduce its commercial regions from four to three and possibly close more manufacturing plants to boost profitability.
Lamon, meanwhile, is set to remain on Valeant’s scientific advisory board after leaving his position.
He took over as chief scientific officer in 2003. Lamon previously was chief executive of Ribapharm Inc., a Valeant spinoff that eventually was brought back into what was then known as ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Lamon’s background includes a stint as president of SciPharm Consulting LLC and positions at Covance Inc., Corning Clinical Laboratories and Corning Life Sciences Inc.
He joined Valeant as a director in 2002.
Big Bang
Newport Beach-based Ad PathLabs Inc. probably eyed Baltimore-based Visicu Inc.’s recent initial public offering with interest.
Ad Pathlabs, which provides research and laboratory services to hospitals and other medical facilities, has the backing of a venture capital investor that had a piece of Visicu’s public offering.
Pacific Venture Group LP, a venture capital investment firm with an office in Irvine, earned a big payday when Visicu went public earlier this month.
Visicu, which provides healthcare technology, raised $96 million in its public offering. Pacific Venture said that based on the first day’s closing price of about $25, its investment in Visicu was worth $72 million. The company’s shares since have fallen a bit to about $22.
Prior to the offering, Pacific Venture’s PVG II fund owned 11.6% of the company. PVG II was the lead investor in Visicu’s second and third rounds of funding.
In addition to Pacific Venture, Ad PathLabs counts Irvine-based venture capital firm Forrest Binkley & Brown as an investor. Ad PathLabs said in 2003 that the possibility of a public stock offering was years away.
Shares of Visicu were originally marketed at $11 to $13 a share. But they were priced at $16 right before trading began.
The company is profitable,federal filings show it earned $10 million last year on revenue of $18.4 million.
Visicu’s eICU product allows for constant monitoring of hospital intensive care units from a remote location. It is designed to help hospitals that don’t have full-time intensivists, or doctors who care exclusively for patients in intensive care units.
Visicu has another OC connection: Chief Executive Frank Sample was recruited from VitalCom Inc., a Tustin-based company that eventually was sold to GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Co., in 2001.
Visicu and Ad PathLabs aren’t Pacific Venture’s only big deals in recent years.
Back in July, Vivant Inc., a Mountain View-based medical device company that’s in Pacific Venture’s portfolio, was sold to Bermuda-based Tyco International Ltd. for $103 million.
Late last year, Asteres Inc., a San Diego company that makes prescription pick-up kiosks for drugstores, finished a $15 million financing. Pacific Venture is an investor.
And Pacific Venture said that San Diego-based Nereus Pharmaceuticals Inc., a maker of cancer drugs, had an investigational new drug application approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The drug is set to move into clinical trials.
Bits and Pieces:
University of California, Irvine, received about $674,000 from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine to train students in basic biology, ethics, policy and clinical applications of stem cell research. UC Irvine’s funds are part of a $12.1 million grant to universities and other research groups in California for stem cell research. The $674,000 pledge is part of a total grant of $2 million promised to UCI during the next three years California State University, Fullerton, recently hosted a conference on aging and poverty that touched on some healthcare issues. The conference featured Fernando Torres-Gil, associate dean of academic affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose expertise includes health and long-term care … Aliso Viejo-based Enclarity Inc. introduced software that helps medical practices generate national provider identifier numbers. These numbers are intended to simplify the communications link between insurance plans and healthcare providers. National provider ID numbers are a result of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and take effect in May 2007.
