A dispute over animal research, a brewing genetics rivalry, & an $11.8 million soda war chest

Happy Wednesday, and thanks for tuning in to Go West.

First up this week, I want to brief you on a legislative debate in Sacramento I’ve been watching over the past few days. The debate pitted animal rights activists against trade groups representing the state’s life sciences sector — and it raised big questions about whether expanded reporting requirements around animal research could endanger California scientists.

The dispute was centered around a bill, called AB889, which would have required more researchers to report more information about the tests they run on animals to the state’s public health department. It also would have put that information into a publicly searchable database.

The bill, touted as a transparency measure, was sponsored by two animal rights groups called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and Social Compassion in Legislation; it also had the support of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA.

But trade groups representing drug makers and research institutions rallied against the legislation. Their argument was twofold: It would be costly and duplicative of existing reporting requirements. And information in the proposed database could leave scientists vulnerable to attack by extremist animal rights activists.

It’s a sensitive issue here for researchers, who still remember a chilling incident in 2008. Two University of California, Santa Cruz, scientists were targeted with firebombs after fliers fashioned like “wanted posters” circulated the names and home addresses of researchers running tests on animals. Researchers at UC Berkeley and UCLA were targeted around that time, too.

In the end, the industry’s opposition to AB889 appears to have worked. Yesterday, the state assemblyman who authored the bill pulled it from consideration because it didn’t look likely to have enough support to move forward.

The trade groups, though, aren’t letting their guard down against what they see as threats to researchers and the animal testing that remains essential to generating new medicines.

“Our opinion on this is that it’s a first step towards future legislation that will try to outright ban the use of animal testing in California,” Oliver Rocroi, the California Life Sciences Association’s vice president for state government relations, told me yesterday before the bill was pulled.

Now, onto the latest headlines

Innovation Endeavors, the Silicon Valley venture firm co-founded by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is out with some news this morning. It’s launching what it’s calling an “ecosystem” of established companies, organizations, and experts to help fund and support startups working at the intersection of life sciences and computer science. The program will be called Deep Life. I’m still not totally sure what a metaphorical ecosystem is, but a spokesperson for the firm assures me that it’s distinct from both an accelerator and a think tank.

Zogenix, a Bay Area drug maker, saw its stock fall more than 20% yesterday. The reason? Sloppiness, explains Ron Leuty of the San Francisco Business Times. The company, which is seeking approval from the FDA for a drug to treat a rare form of epilepsy, mistakenly filed the wrong clinical data with the agency; it also didn’t submit other key data that the company says it had been told were not needed.

As buzz grows around the potential of patient records services, here’s a cautionary tale: Microsoft is shutting down its own such product, called HealthVault, this coming November, ZDNet reports. The service lasted for a decade, as a way of storing medical records and sharing that information with clinicians.

The San Francisco-based gene therapy developer Audentes Therapeutics is in-licensing development programs for two forms of muscular dystrophy, my STAT colleague Matt Herper reports. It’s still very early — the two approaches have not yet been tested in humans — but it’s also the latest sign of rising interest in the field.

In Seattle, the effort to save people from opioid overdoses is deploying an unusual group of workers: the employees of bars and nightclubs. These employees are being trained to administer naloxone nasal spray to people who overdose, the Seattle Times reports.

I’ve got a new piece out this morning mapping out five names you should know at Verily, Alphabet’s ambitious life sciences unit. Among them are two influential heart researchers, Dr. Jessica Mega and Dr. Mike McConnell. We’ll be doing similar lists in the coming weeks for other Big Tech companies, so please send me a note at rebecca.robbins@statnews.com if you have any ideas of notable health tech players we should profile at companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple.

Number of the week

The soda wars are flaring up in California, where soft drink companies have been trying to block proposals to tax and put health warning labels on their drinks. That’s why the soda industry and their lobbyists spent $11.8 million trying to advance their interests at the state and local levels over the past two years, according to an analysis from California Healthline.

23andMe and Invitae and a brewing rivalry

Shall we start with the good news or the bad news of the week for 23andMe?

Let's be generous and start with the good news. As it's been doing quite often lately, the Silicon Valley genetic testing company yesterday rolled out a new genetic report. This one analyzes three genetic variants linked to hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis, or hATTR, a condition in which a protein builds up and harms the heart and the nerves.

Interestingly, 23andMe said it will collaborate with the Cambridge, Mass., biotech Alnylam Pharmaceuticals on a new disease awareness program to provide spit kits to the relatives of people who test positive for one of the variants associated with the condition. Alnylam has long had a similar program with Invitae, the San Francisco medical genetics company; long before Alnylam won a landmark approval last summer for the first drug relying on a technique known as RNA interference, which happens to treat hATTR.

Speaking of 23andMe and Invitae: 23andMe got some bad news the other day when it found itself as the target of an unusual study from Invitae. The Invitae research, presented last week, examined 23andMe's FDA-approved genetic test that examines three genetic variants in the BRCA genes, which are associated with elevated risk for breast and ovarian cancer; the study found that 23andMe's test misses 90% of carriers.

A 23andMe spokesperson said the company found the Invitae research "highly misleading," in part because its report makes clear that it's only looking at three variants.