Company news

In a deal with Eli Lilly and Co., New York-based Advion BioSciences Inc. will open a 22,000-square-foot drug discovery bioanalytical laboratory in May at the Purdue Research Park in Indianapolis. Lilly, the Indianapolis-based drugmaker, will move its own drug-discovery bioanalytical operations to Advion as part of the partnership and retain some oversight. The lab initially will employ 49 people and could ramp up to 66 workers by 2015. Lilly expects 26 employees to lose their jobs but will be able to apply for limited positions within Lilly or at Advion’s Indianapolis lab. Advion will focus on earlier-stage, drug-discovery bioanalytical services, which evaluate how a potential new medicine is absorbed and metabolized in experimental models. Many of the activities performed at the lab are required for the preparation of a molecule’s entry into human testing. Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Advion up to $650,000 in performance-based tax credits and up to $30,000 in training grants based on the company's job-creation plans. Develop Indy will provide additional training funding and support property-tax abatement from the city of Indianapolis.

Hall, Render, Killian, Heath & Lyman added 24 attorneys last year as the health reform law generated a wave of legal work for its clients. Of those new hires, four were added to Hall Render’s headquarters office in Indianapolis, with the rest spread among the firm’s offices in Milwaukee, Louisville and Troy, Mich. Hall Render already had the second-most health care attorneys of any firm in the nation, according to a ranking published in June 2010 by Modern Healthcare magazine. Hall Render now has more than 150 attorneys who are members of the American Health Lawyers Association. The firm with the most health attorneys last year was Atlanta-based King & Spalding, with 229.