Study shows state’s air quality improving
A federal study shows that Indiana has a lower estimated health risk from air toxins compared with many surrounding states.
A federal study shows that Indiana has a lower estimated health risk from air toxins compared with many surrounding states.
The local church is joining Trinity Wall Street Church in New York in donating to reconstruction of the building destroyed in the January 2010 earthquake.
It always amazes me that the obvious results of exporting jobs, importing workers and engaging in other forms of labor and environmental arbitrage are a mystery to newspaper editorialists and many of our so-called public leaders.
Gov. Mitch Daniels has spent years talking about issues that typically make voters' eyes glaze over: Cutting spending. Balancing budgets. Shrinking government. The priorities haven't changed much in Daniels' six years as governor. But suddenly voters are paying attention.
Every business sector has influential players, whether they are in the public eye or wield their influence behind the scenes.
Things are getting crazy as state resources diminish. Our governor is clearly out of touch with reality. He wants to abolish the 1:600 ratio for elementary school counselors to students on top of drastically cutting back state-supported mental-health programs.
FINALIST: Community Achievement in Health Care
Managed Health Services, which administers health benefits for Indiana Medicaid, has hired Holly L. Ross as its finance manager. Managed Health is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Centene Corp. Ross previously served as the senior accountant and financial analyst for KForce in Indianapolis.
Bioanalytical Systems Inc. added Brad Gien to its Culex services team, which performs pre-clinical testing of experimental drug compounds. Gien comes to West Lafayette-based Bioanalytical from NoAb BioDiscoveries in Ontario, Canada.
WellPoint Inc. named Nick Brecker president of specialty markets for most of its business lines. His previous position as president of life and disability insurance is being filled by Pat Murphy. Murphy was previously the functional chief financial officer for WellPoint’s information technology team.
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.
Over the next five years, WellPoint Inc. expects the employer-sponsored insurance business to shrink slightly, forcing it to shift its focus to government-sponsored plans.
In a better world, politicians would talk to voters as if they were adults. They would explain that discretionary spending has little to do with the long-run imbalance between spending and revenues.
A bill that would offer Indiana's utilities incentives to build the state's first nuclear power plants is advancing in the Statehouse despite strong opposition from environmentalists, renewable energy boosters and industries that consume large amounts of electricity.
The decision on military budget cuts could have a big impact on the Indianapolis operations of Rolls-Royce Corp., the city’s second-largest manufacturer behind Eli Lilly and Co.
President Barack Obama is sending Congress a $3.73 trillion spending blueprint that pledges $1.1 trillion in deficit savings over the next decade through spending cuts and tax increases.
New investors got in for $6 a share—which is less than the average price paid by prior investors, a regulatory filing reveals.
Indiana University has created the Indiana Institute for Personalized Medicine, with $11.25 million in funding from its School of Medicine, its IUPUI campus, the Indiana Physician Scientist Initiative and the Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center. The newly created institute will conduct research and work to develop tools that help health care providers select the best medicines for patients based on their genetic traits. “Much of the future of health care is in personalized medicine, meaning more precise targeting of the right medication to the right patient at the right time,” said Dr. David Flockhart, an IU professor of cancer epidemiology and genetics who has been named director of the institute.
Eli Lilly and Co. and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation have agreed to to spend $1.4 million over three years to fund the research at University of Geneva that could help patients with type 1 diabetes to regenerate insulin-producing cells destroyed by the disease. Previous research by Geneva’s Pedro Herrera showed the possibility of converting pancreas cells that do not produce insulin into insulin-producing cells—and to do so without genetic manipulation. Researchers at Indianapolis-based Lilly will now collaborate with Herrera to find potential targets in the pancreas that when exposed to a drug would induce this cell conversion. Lilly hopes to be able to then develop drugs that could treat type 1 diabetes and, perhaps, eliminate the need for insulin therapy.
Endocyte Inc. went public on Friday, selling 12.5 million shares at $6 apiece. The price has since risen to about $7.30. The West Lafayette-based drug-development company twice cut the price of its offering last week. It had intended to sell about 5.4 million shares for a range of $13 to $15 apiece. The underwriters of Endocyte’s IPO have an option to buy an additional 1.8 million shares, which could bring Endocyte’s total sale to $86 million. Including the underwriters' options, the company could see proceeds of up to $86.3 million. The company, which has no sales to date, intends to use all the money from the sale to advance development on its experimental drugs. Its lead product candidate, EC145, is a potential cancer treatment. The company hopes to move it into late-stage development as a potential ovarian cancer treatment. Endocyte is trading under the "ECYT" symbol on Nasdaq.
Indianapolis-based Medical Animatics sold some of its assets to Indianapolis-based Harrison College. The deal included three master-level designers, animation equipment and portions of Medical Animatics’ illustration libraries. Harrison, formerly known as the Indiana Business College, intends to use the assets to develop content for its online, on-ground and blended courses. Medical Animatics, which had made instructional courses for health care clients, had helped Harrison design an online medical assisting program, which launched in January. Harrison did not purchase the full agency or its name, and will not assume any of the company’s liabilities. Medical Animatics founder Harlon Wilson said the company is looking to take its work into new markets.
Bioanalytical Systems Inc. swung to a profit in its most recent quarter. The West Lafayette-based provider of pharmaceutical testing equipment and services earned $310,000, or 6 cents per share, in the three months ended Dec. 31. In the same quarter a year ago, the company lost $1.5 million, or 30 cents per share. Revenue for the most recent quarter totaled $8.1 million, a 27-percent increase from a year ago, as pharmaceutical companies renewed their research and development spending. Bioanalytical also trimmed $265,000 in expenses in the past year.
Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences boosted its fourth-quarter revenue by 19 percent to $1.3 billion, compared with the same quarter a year ago. Quarterly earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization also edged up from $69 million to $72 million. Dow Agro’s overhead expenses increased 3 percent during the quarter because of new product launches and commercial activities related to recent seed acquisitions. It also spent 14 percent more on research and development. Dow Agro is a unit of Midland, Mich.-based Dow Chemical Co.