Care delivery is a topic that is simultaneously growing bigger and smaller.
On the hospital side, systems have opted to consolidate—using scale to better position themselves in a lowered-reimbursement environment. On the patient care side, the trend is to narrow use of individual health data to provide personalized care. Precision medicine encompasses a wide spectrum of care, including intervention, diagnostics, medication and treatment.
Orange County remains a top player in life science, with a particularly robust subsector in medical device manufacturing. The industry contributes to 121,000 jobs and generates $33 billion in annual economic activity, according to an economic impact report recently published by Biocom, a San Diego-based trade association that researches the life science industry in Southern California.
Stories to Watch
• What’s next for the St. Joseph Hoag alliance? Renton, Wash.-based Providence St. Joseph already did away with the one-system dual headquarters structure when it announced in August that Richard Afable will retire at the end of the year as executive vice president of Providence St. Joseph Southern California Region of Orange County, High Desert and chief executive of St. Joseph Hoag. Erik Wexler now oversees the region, which is mad up of OC, Los Angeles and San Bernardino.
The latest is a potential merger between Ascension Health in St. Louis, Mo. and Providence St. Joseph that would create the country’s largest hospital chain. Ascension is nearly three times Providence St. Joseph, with 141 hospitals compared to the latter’s 50. The Business Journal, which had written about Providence St. Joseph in terms of its system office in Irvine, believes there will be fewer strictly OC initiatives if the Ascension deal goes through.
• Cancer immunotherapy will be a hot area of precision medicine. It uses substances taken from the patient to boost the natural defense system to fight cancer. Irvine-based Aivita Biomedical Inc. and Seal Beach-based Dendreon Inc. are pursuing the path, the former in ovarian cancer, the latter in prostate cancer. Dendreon, which already has Food and Drug Administration-approved drug Provenge, plans to ramp up growth, as it’s now independent from Valeant Pharmaceuticals, which sold Dendreon in June to Chinese conglomerate Sanpower Group Co. Ltd. Dendreon has returned to profitability with two years of double-digit sales growth, according to a company spokesperson.
• Watch out for newcomer Bioniz Therapeutics, which is developing a “one-of-a-kind therapy [that] attacks multiple bad actors,” said Chief Executive Nazli Azimi. She said that while there are approved therapies targeting cytokines—proteins that affect immune responses and can result in a variety of disorders caused by immune dysfunction—there are currently no “effective and safe options for treating human diseases involving more than two cytokines.”
Azimi said the company is fully funded to support clinical efforts up to 2019, but is open to raising a series B or partnering with larger pharmaceutical companies.
Series A round investors include Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda, former Allergan Chief Executive David Pyott and Masimo Corp. Chief Executive Joe Kiani.
• Diagnostic tests play into the precision medicine dialogue, providing information on prevention and treatment decisions. Ambry Genetics Corp. in Aliso Viejo and CombiMatrix Corp. in Irvine were acquired, the former by Japanese printer maker Konica, the latter by biotech company InVitae Corp. in San Francisco. The companies said they will remain in OC, leveraging the new partnerships to accelerate growth.
• Aerie Pharmaceuticals in Irvine anticipates FDA approval of glaucoma drug Rhopressa in February.
Last Year’s Stories
• Last year we chose Jim Mazzo, global president of ophthalmic devices at Carl Zeiss Meditec AG, as our person to watch. The battle-tested industry veteran—he still faces charges of insider trading after a mistrial was declared in May—did not execute on his plan to buy glaucoma and dry-eye device makers, and instead bought Veracity Innovations LLC in August. Its digital cloud-based technology is designed to improve cataract surgery planning, analysis and risk management by taking in relevant data from the patient’s medical records, such as medications and prior surgeries.
The technology was incorporated into Veracity Surgical, a cloud-based cataract surgery planning platform that Zeiss introduced at American Academy of Ophthalmology’s annual meeting in New Orleans. The company also introduced new diagnostic technologies for retina and glaucoma, including Clarus 500, the first fundus imaging system, and HFA3 SITA Faster, which reduces visual field testing time by over 50%. Mazzo said Zeiss will focus on growing data management and other personalized technologies.
• We picked Abbot Medical Optics, renamed Johnson & Johnson Vision following its acquisition by Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, N.J., in January, as our company to watch. The Santa Ana-based device maker is the vision-surgery arm of Johnson & Johnson, a space where Johnson & Johnson had no prior market share. Johnson & Johnson said its “vision care franchise achieved operational sales growth of 48% compared to the prior year’s fiscal third quarter,” growth “driven by sales from the recent acquisition of AMO,” according to Securities and Exchange Commission quarterly filings for the period ended Oct. 1.
Johnson & Johnson’s contact lens vision care unit is based in Florida.
