Correction

Earlier we referred to Xoma as a Berkeley-based company. However

BERKELEY, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--Nov. 24, 1998--XOMA Corporation (Nasdaq:XOMA) today announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously approved a proposal to change the Company's legal domicile from Delaware to Bermuda.

Vision 1920 regrets the error

Defensive medicine

Last night we pointed out that Dr. Brett P. "eHarmony" Giroir had previous dealings with Xoma, the Berkeley-based biotech company. Nature Biotechnology wrote about what they were doing in 1998.

The pivotal phase III clinical trial of one of the last "surviving" sepsis drugs—for the treatment of meningococcal sepsis—is nearing completion. XOMA Corporation's (Berkeley, CA) Neuprex is recombinant human bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (BPI), an endogenous neutralizer of endotoxin and, with lesser potency, an antibiotic. Some experts are cautiously optimistic about the outcome and hope that positive results will reinvigorate the sepsis field. "This field needs some excitement," says Brett Giroir, of Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX, who is the principal investigator of the Neuprex trial. "If positive, this study is going to answer a lot of questions."

Neuprex was being repositioned for meningococcal sepsis after it turned out to be less effective than hoped in treating more general trauma. Xoma continued to test Neuprex against sepsis and other conditions, but Vision 1920 can't find any evidence of a final FDA approval. Xoma's current hopes are mostly pinned on an antibody drug called XOMA 052 that binds Interleukin-1 beta (whatever that is... our tame faculty consultant has been less tame of late).

Dr. Giroir was at UT-Southwestern when the Neuprex work started, but came to the Texas A&M System via the Defense Science Office at DARPA. Xoma founder Patrick Scannon also has been on DARPA advisory boards and other biodefense projects. Xoma has done biodefense work for NAIAD on vaccines against botulism toxin.

Xoma has another indirect A&M connection, noted in this 2005 news story:

Lexicon Genetics and Xoma have announced the formation of a collaboration to jointly develop and commercialise antibody drugs that could be effective in treating diet-induced obesity and enhanced insulin sensitivity.

Xoma and Introgen also have had at least one common Board member.

The suggestion that this might create a conflict of interest for Dr. Giroir is absurd:

Giroir said that Introgen is providing advice but has no contract to receive any money from the center and that Xoma's contract for helping design the center will top out at $20,000.

Murano's accusations are patently false

More from the Chancellor's extended notes (pdf)

Last time committee on IP met - she pulled out papers on XOMA & berated Guy for making deal w/co. hurting the "A&M Brand" that she was dedicated to protecting - She misread info - & did not really know how to read the data - I don't know who gave her the info [concern is valid but approach & behavior totally inappropriate]

What deal? This one from Sept. 2008:

“We are very pleased to be working with XOMA, a biotechnology company with more than 25 years of experience as a successful innovator in antibody development and manufacturing,” said Brett Giroir, M.D., vice chancellor for research for the Texas A&M System. “We expect that the project will generate new opportunities for rapid translation of biomedical discoveries into life-saving products. The collaboration also holds the promise to develop manufacturing technologies that position the state of Texas as the partner of choice for biotechnology companies in the future.”

Dr. Brett P. "eHarmony" Giroir, in case you didn't know, is the System's Vice Chancellor for Research, and a leading biodefense researcher (Try a PubMed search on 'giroir bp AND biodefense'). Dr. Giroir knows Xoma well - they hold the rights on five of his patents.

Xoma was the subject of a 2007 profile in the New York Times:

Xoma, which Dr. Scannon started in 1981, has never earned an operating profit or marketed a drug of its own. And in the quarter-century since its birth, Xoma has managed to burn through more than $700 million raised from investors and other pharmaceutical companies.
...
XOMA, which went public 20 years ago, is a case study of unfulfilled promise in the biotech business. It may also be a story that ends happily, if very belatedly, with success. The company’s management and some investors, including OrbiMed, say they are convinced that what they describe as Xoma’s dogged determination is finally making headway, or at least that its stock has room to grow.

The company’s stock has nearly doubled over the last year, hitting a 52-week high on Friday of $3.30, before closing at $3.04. Still, that is well below the stock’s record high of $32 a share, reached in both 1987 and 1991.

There's even more room to grow now; Xoma closed at $0.78/share today (down from $2.27 on the day the deal was announced).