Company news

The Indiana University School of Medicine has been selected to lead a five-year, $12 million national research project to develop new treatments for inherited cancers and related developmental disorders. The grant comes from the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Wade Clapp, chairman of the department of pediatrics at the IU medical school will serve as the principal investigator for the new project. Researchers from IU, the University of California at San Francisco, the National Cancer Institute, the University of Texas Southwestern, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Alabama-Birmingham and the University of North Carolina will focus on neurofibromatosis type 1, which is more prevalent than cystic fibrosis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Huntington's disease combined.

Two local startups developing diabetes drugs have agreed to be sold to Danish diabetes giant Novo Nordisk A/S for undisclosed amounts. Calibrium LLC and MB2 LLC, both based in Carmel, were developing protein-based diabetes drugs that came from research led by Richard DiMarchi, a chemistry professor at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus and the former vice president of research and development at Eli Lilly and Co. DiMarchi’s team has been behind several previous drug companies, including Marcadia Biotech. Calibrium formed in 2012 and then raised $1.7 million in investment capital in late 2013. MB2 was formed last year and raised $1.5 million by December, with plans to raise as much as $4 million. It was working on drugs aimed at diabetes and obesity.

Eli Lilly and Co. won a court ruling that will keep generic versions of the chemotherapy drug Alimta off the U.S. market until a patent expires in 2022. Proposed versions by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and Fresenius SE’s APP Pharmaceuticals unit would infringe the patent, a federal judge in Indianapolis said Tuesday. The patent covers a way of administering Alimta’s active ingredient, pemetrexed disodium, with vitamins to reduce side effects in patients undergoing treatment for lung cancer and mesothelioma. Teva and APP want to sell their versions with similar prescribing information. Without that patent, generic versions of Alimta could have been sold in the United States starting in 2017. Alimta generated $1.24 billion in sales in the first half of the year for Indianapolis-based Lilly.

St. Vincent Health will sponsor the Indiana Pacers’ new $50 million training venue, across the street from Bankers Life Fieldhouse. The five-story facility will be called the St. Vincent Center and include a facility on the fifth floor where primary care, cardiovascular and sports performance services will be offered. Financial terms of the deal between the Pacers and St. Vincent Health were not disclosed, but both sides touted the new facility as a big improvement for the southeast quadrant of downtown. The Pacers aim to get started on the 130,000-square-foot project this year and plan to open it in 2017. “Today, we are partnering with the Indiana Pacers to expand our high-quality, compassionate care to downtown Indianapolis in order help improve the health of area residents and the community,” St. Vincent CEO Jonathan Nalli said Wednesday.

MedPro Group, a medical malpractice insurer, will add about 70 jobs at its headquarters in Fort Wayne by 2018. MedPro, which is owned by Oklahoma-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., already employs 400 people in Indiana and 650 nationwide. It plans to build a 10,500-square-foot addition to its 123,000-square-foot headquarters. MedPro insures more than 140,000 healthcare providers, and in 2014, earned $874 million in premium. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation offered The Medical Protective Company up to $700,000 in conditional tax credits based on the company’s job creation plans. The city of Fort Wayne will consider additional incentives.