Companies

Life Sciences Sector

Alaris Medical Systems

Alaris was formed in November 1996 when Advanced Medical Inc. merged its wholly owned subsidiary IMED Corporation with IVAC Medical Systems. IVAC and IMED were already major players in the intravenous drug delivery market, in operation since 1968 and 1972,... Learn more »

Biogen Idec

Idec Pharmaceuticals of San Diego, California acquires Biogen of Cambridge, Massachusetts in a $5.8 billion transaction. The merged organization is headquartered in Cambridge. Called Biogen Idec, it becomes the third largest biotechnology company in the Un... Learn more »

Biosite Incorporated

In 1988, Biosite co-founders Kim Blickenstaff, Kenneth Buechler, Gunars Valkirs and Richard Anderson took a gamble that paid-off. They left secure corporate jobs at Eli Lilly-owned Hybritech to develop a new method of detecting illegal drugs - fast - when ... Learn more »

Biovest Partners

Hybritech ex-executives Howard Greene and Tim Wollaeger found Biovest, a San Diego based venture capital firm. Biovest helped found Pyxis, Biosite, Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMLN) and Vical (NASDAQ: VICL). All four of these companies became public. P... Learn more »

CareFusion

CareFusion is a global medical technology corporation serving the health care industry launched in 2009 as a spin-off from the Clinical and Medical Products segment of Cardinal Health. Carefusion includes all former IVAC and IMED product assets plus additi... Learn more »

Eli-Lilly

Eli Lilly & Co. becomes the first major pharmaceutical corporation to make a serious move into biotech R&D when it purchases Hybritech, Inc., a San Diego monoclonal antibody company for an estimated $350 million. Industry analysts wonder whether the acquis... Learn more »

Forward Ventures

Forward Ventures, founded in 1993, has a team of investment professionals with extensive experience in venture capital and operations. Forward has invested in over 50 companies since it was founded in 1993 and currently has approximately $50... Learn more »

Gen-Probe

Two executives at Hybritech, Inc. in San Diego, Thomas H. Adams, Senior Vice-President of Research, and Howard Birndorf, Vice-President of Business Development, leave the company to start up a new firm called Gen-Probe. In February 1983, Hybritech’s ... Learn more »

Gensia Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Gensia is founded by UC. San Diego faculty member Paul Laikind. Focus is on the development of drugs to treat cardiovascular diseases. Company merged into Sicor and was acquired by Teva Pharmaceuticals.... Learn more »

Hybritech, Inc.

Cancer researcher Ivor Royston and lab technician Howard Birndorf of the University of California, San Diego, found Hybritech, Inc. in La Jolla, an upscale beach town just north of San Diego.  Seed money for the venture is provided by Kleiner, Perkins... Learn more »

IDEC Pharmaceuticals

IDEC Pharmaceuticals is founded in San Diego by UC-San Diego physicians and immunologists Ivor Royston and Robert E. Sobol, San Diego bioentrepreneur Howard Birndorf, and Stanford University cancer researchers Ron Levy and Richard Miller. Brook Byers of Kl... Learn more »

Illumina, Inc.

Illumina Inc. is founded in San Diego by Larry Bock and John Stuepnagel, venture partners with the CW Group. The pair learns of a fluorescence-based DNA microarray technology developed by biochemist, materials scientist, and nanotechnologist David Walt of ... Learn more »

IMED Corporation

Founded in 1972, IMED is the second IV pump company created by Richard A. Cramer. IMED’s staff included several of the same individuals who had previously launched IVAC, including certain product design engineers nd later, also former members of the ... Learn more »

IVAC Corporation

Founded in 1968 by San Diego entrepreneur Richard A. Cramer, IVAC Corporation  was the first company to apply the revolutionary advances being delivered by California’s microprocessor industry to new innovative, microprocessor-controlled medical... Learn more »

J. Craig Venter Institute

The J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) formed in 2006 through the merger of several affiliated and legacy organizations—The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and The Center for the Advancement of Genomics (TCAG), the J. Craig Venter Scien... Learn more »

Mentus

Marketing agency founded in 1981 by Guy Iannuzzi specializing in marketing and public relations for high technology and life science industries. Company website: http://www.mentus.com... Learn more »

Pyxis Corporation

Co-founded by Ron Taylor and investor Tim Wollaeger in 1987. What started as a small start-up company grew to a highly-profitable, publically listed company with more than 1500 employees. Under Taylor’s leadership, Pyxis set a new standard for t... Learn more »

ResMed, Inc.

ResMed Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the development, manufacture, and distribution of medical equipment for treating, diagnosing, and managing sleep-disordered breathing and other respiratory disorders. It offers various products, including a... Learn more »

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, establishes a private, not-for-profit institution of scientific research in La Jolla, California – the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In 1960, having secured a $20 million grant from the National Sci... Learn more »

The Scripps Research Institute

In 1955, San Diego's Scripps Memorial Hospital reorganizes its research arm as the Scripps Research Institute. Six years later, the organization lures leading immunologist Frank Dixon and four colleagues away from the University of Pittsburgh and enters th... Learn more »

Sequana Therapeutics, Inc.

Sequana Therapeutics is founded in San Diego, CA by Jay B. Lichter Ph.D. and Kevin Kinsella of Avalon Ventures. The company focuses on using gene discovery technology to determine which genes are associated with certain diseases. In 1998 Seaquana Therapeut... Learn more »

UC San Diego

During the early years of the Cold War, federal policies authorizing expanded government support of basic scientific research convinced California legislators, public administrators, educators, and businesspersons that real opportunities existed for enlarg... Learn more »