Company news

A major lender to Arcadia Resources Inc. has moved to foreclose on the struggling Indianapolis-based business, which in turn agreed to cease operations. Arcadia reported the foreclosure agreement with Dallas-based Comerica Bank, which Arcadia owed $11 million, in a May 3 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The closing represents the probable final fall for the once-promising health care company. Just two years ago, the company announced a huge expansion that it expected would add 930 jobs in Indiana by 2013. In order to satisfy a debt to one of its suppliers, Arcadia completed the sale of its DailyMed pharmacy business in February to a subsidiary of Illinois-based Walgreen Co. for just $2 million. That left Arcadia with its home health care and medical staffing businesses, which were being funded by an $11 million line of credit from Comerica. Arcadia already had drawn on the entire line of credit, which came due on April 30. The company owed about $30 million to three private equity firms that likely will not be repaid. The company had less than $1 million in assets, according to the SEC filing. In the nine months ended Dec. 31, Arcadia had $61.5 million in revenue and posted a loss of $13.5 million.

Eli Lilly and Co., Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca plc will contribute two dozen failed compounds to launch a new $20 million program in which government-sponsored scientists will see if the compounds show promise against other diseases than the ones for which they were first tested. If they do, it could help the drugmakers, which will still own the compounds, to bring them to market faster. The academic researchers would share in the profits of any drugs that make it to market. The program, kicked off May 3 by the National Institutes of Health, hopes to add more compounds soon. “It’s an opportunity to get more value out of our molecules,” said Jan Lundberg, president of Lilly Research Laboratories in Indianapolis. “Instead of parking them, we can let the academic community and NIH continue the testing to see if they have a significant benefit that we actually don’t know of today.”

A researcher at the Indiana University School of Medicine got national attention for his study suggesting that Tasers wielded by police can induce fatal heart attacks. Dr. Doulas Zipes, an emeritus professor of cardiology at the IU med school, found that in eight healthy men who became unconscious after being stunned by a Taser, six developed abnormal heart rhythms. All eight of the men, who ranged in age from 16 to 48, lost consciousness after receiving the shock; seven of them died. “This study doesn’t say that we should abandon using Taser devices, but it does show that users should exercise caution, avoid chest shocks and monitor the person after shock to ensure there are no adverse reactions,” Zipes said after his study was published in the journal Circulation. The results of Zipes' study were covered by USA Today, the New York Times and CBS News. A spokesman for Arizona-based Taser International Inc. told USA Today that the small number of cases in Zipes' study are not enough to draw broad conclusions. "There have been 3 million uses of Taser devices worldwide, with this case series reporting eight of concern," said Steve Tuttle, who also noted that Zipes has testified against Taser as an expert witness in legal cases brought against the company. "This article does not support a cause-effect association and fails to accurately evaluate the risks versus the benefits of the thousands of lives saved by police with Taser devices," Tuttle told the newspaper.

Authorities have made arrests in the 2010 theft of about $80 million in Eli Lilly and Co. prescription drugs from a Connecticut warehouse, according to the Associated Press. Two Cuban brothers were arrested in Florida and charged with helping steal the pharmaceuticals, including Lilly’s drugs Prozac and Zyprexa. The thieves broke into the Enfield warehouse of Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant Lilly in March 2010 and stole enough pills to fill a tractor-trailer. The drugs were believed to be destined for the black market, perhaps overseas. After cutting a hole in the roof of the industrial park warehouse, they lowered themselves to the floor, disabled the alarms and spent at least an hour loading pallets of antidepressants and other drugs into a vehicle at the loading dock, authorities said. Lilly plans to destroy the medicines once they are no longer needed as evidence.

Indianapolis-based HealthNet Inc. received a $155,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to renovate its Fountain Square facility to accommodate 1,150 more patient visits each year. HealthNet will use the money to turn a office space and a medical records storage area into three patient exam rooms. The center already handles more than 35,000 patient visits each year. The money is part of a series of grants to community health centers across the country. The funds were made available as part of the 2010 Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act. HealthNet operates 10 community health centers in the Indianapolis area.