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The Indiana 21st Century Research and Technology Fund received $2.6 million from the December sale of Marcadia Biotech to Roche Diagnostics Corp. That represented a 30-percent total return on the state’s $2 million investment in the company. It is the first time the 21st Century Fund has reaped a return on one of the grants it gives to startup companies since the fund rewrote its investment rules five years ago. Before that, it simply made grants that did not have to be repaid if a company hit it big.

Hoosier Village Retirement Center in Zionsville announced plans Monday for a $32 million project that will expand its campus near Interstate 465 and Michigan Road. Hoosier Village plans a 90-unit apartment complex to replace its original residence hall, which was constructed in the 1960s, renovated in the 1990s and expanded in 2001. Hoosier Village currently has 197 independent-living units on its 150-acre campus. Plans also call for a “Memory Support Center,” licensed for residential care of residents with Alzheimer’s and other dementia-related conditions. It will have 36 private rooms and 7,500 square feet of common areas. In addition, the expansion will add a 23,700-square-foot dining center with a 250-person seating capacity, and a community center with exercise rooms, a fitness center, indoor swimming pool and locker rooms. Hoosier Village is a not-for-profit community operated by Baptist Homes of Indiana Inc. The expansion, which should begin this spring and conclude in 2013, will allow the center to add 50 full-time workers. The project is awaiting approval from the Zionsville Planning Department.

Indianapolis-based Arcadia Resources Inc. signed a three-month pilot agreement with the Cleveland Clinic under which the hospital system will use Arcadia’s DailyMed program to help chronically ill patients take their medications after being released from a hospital, thereby reducing readmissions. DailyMed dispenses a monthly cycle of a patient’s prescriptions, over-the-counter medications and vitamins, and organizes them into pre-sorted packets marked with the date and time they should be taken. Also, DailyMed pharmacists call patients, as well as their primary-care doctors and caregivers to encourage medication compliance and avoid drug interactions.

Nearly 300 physicians from Indianapolis-based Community Physicians of Indiana and Evansville-based Deaconess Clinic have joined a research network run by HealthCore Inc., a subsidiary of Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. The Integrated Research Network uses physicians to study drugs, devices, diagnostics and medical methods to see if real-world applications differ from results produced in clinical trials. HealthCore combines its study results with WellPoint’s records on the 33 million Americans it insures. The Deaconess Clinic has about 90 physicians in its multi-specialty physician group. Community Physicians of Indiana employs about 200 general practice physicians for the Community Health Network hospital system. The HealthCore network is currently exploring several opportunities in the areas of heart failure, pain syndromes, antibiotic resistance, Type 2 diabetes and breast cancer.
 

Two Purdue University professors and a physician at the Indiana University School of Medicine have created a company to develop nanotechnology devices for medical diagnostic and therapeutic applications. NanoSense Inc., based in West Lafayette, will design tiny chips that can sense biological processes or the dosing of a medicine from inside a patient’s body. The company is led by IU’s Dr. Arthur Ko, a radiation oncologist; Purdue’s Babak Ziaie, a professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Teimour Maleki, a research professor at  Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center.

With a $167,000 grant from the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation, IUPUI will launch the Indiana Schweitzer Fellows Program on Friday. It is the 13th U.S. program site for the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship program, which pays stipends to graduate students who work to address social and health disparities. The Indiana program will be run by Dr. Douglas B. McKeag, former chairman of family medicine at the IU School of Medicine. The grant will be used to implement the 5-2-1-0 Healthy Kids Countdown, a childhood obesity-prevention program, by Schweitzer Fellows throughout the state. The program will select 15 fellows and pay each of them an annual stipend of $3,000. Online applications are due March 1.

Endocyte Inc. priced shares for its initial public offering last week, moving one step closer toward raising more than $80 million to fund its cancer-drug development. The West Lafayette-based drug-development firm intends to sell 6.15 million shares for $13 to $15 apiece. That range would fetch $80 million to $92 million. Those figures include 802,500 shares that will be sold only if demand outstrips the initial allotment of shares of 5.35 million. If Endocyte sells only the smaller amount of shares, it would raise between $70 million and $80 million. In either case, more than $10 million of the funds would cover Endocyte’s costs in staging the IPO. Endocyte first indicated in August it would take itself public by selling shares worth $86.3 million, but not until Jan. 12 did it disclose the price range and number of shares to be sold. The company is developing six cancer drugs, most of which target cancer cells by binding to their receptors for the compound folate. Such receptors are “over-expressed” in cancer cells, compared with healthy cells, so Endocyte’s drugs have the potential to be more potent killing the cancers while attacking fewer healthy cells than existing chemotherapy agents. Endocyte’s leading drug, called EC145, is being tested to treat ovarian cancer that is resistant to platinum-based drugs, as well as to treat non-small-cell lung cancer.

Some health advocacy groups that say they are speaking for patients’ interests before legislatures, regulatory agencies or public forums fail to disclose their funding from Eli Lilly and Co. and other drugmakers, according to The New York Times. Citing a new study from Columbia University, the Times reported that Lilly paid $3.2 million to 161 health advocacy groups in the first half of 2007. But only one in four of the groups acknowledged Lilly’s support anywhere on their public websites, the study said. Only one in 10 disclosed Lilly as the sponsor of a specific grant, and none of them disclosed the exact amount. Lilly’s reports were studied because it was the first company to disclose such payments.

It’s back to reality for Bioanalytical Systems Inc. After its stock price soared 135 percent in three trading days, the stock started falling back to earth—helped in no small part by the company’s underwhelming earnings report. The West Lafayette-based firm said revenue dipped 13 percent, to $7.4 million, in its fiscal fourth quarter compared to the same period a year ago. Its loss narrowed to $300,000 in the quarter, compared to a loss of $1.4 million in the same period last year. The company sells testing equipment and services to pharmaceutical firms, which have been retrenching the past two years. “The revenue decline in fiscal 2010 stems mainly from study delays, price declines and spending reductions by our customers as part of their overall cost-savings initiatives,” Bioanalytical officials noted in a statement. But the company’s business accelerated in the second half of its fiscal year, causing CEO Anthony Chilton to give an upbeat outlook for 2011.

Eli Lilly and Co. and Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc. have asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve their diabetes medicine Byetta for use in combination with basal insulin, which diabetics take in between meals to control their blood sugar. The companies would like to reignite Byetta sales, which have slumped since 2008, when the FDA publicized cases of pancreatitis among patients taking the drug. Indianapolis-based Lilly and San Diego-based Amylin tried to win approval this year for a once-weekly version of Byetta, called Bydureon, but the FDA asked for more tests, delaying the drug’s approval until 2012.

BioCrossroads’ Indiana Seed Fund invested $250,000 in Indianapolis-based Aarden Pharmaceuticals. Aarden’s leading drug program focuses on tuberculosis. The company’s product is based on research by Zhong-Zin Zhang, a professor and chairman of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Zhang is an expert in protein tyrosine phosphates, a group of signaling enzymes that regulate cellular processes. His research was funded through Lilly Endowment’s Indiana Genomics Initiative. The company decided last year to establish its headquarters here, selecting Indianapolis over San Diego.

Clarian Health physicians will now provide cardiac services to patients at Columbus Regional Hospital facilities under a new affiliation. The agreement ensures Columbus Regional has full-time availability of heart surgeons, in additional to the interventional cardiology care provided by Indiana Heart Physicians-Columbus. Columbus Regional has offered 24-7 heart surgery since 2002. In 2011, Clarian will change its name to Indiana University Health.

CNO Financial Group Inc. got a financial strength upgrade from A.M. Best Co., the pre-eminent rating agency for insurance companies. New Jersey-based Best boosted its grade on Carmel-based CNO from B (fair) to B+ (good), crediting CNO with focusing more on business lines where it has a clear competitive advantage and its recent financial restructurings. CNO, which was formerly called Conseco, sells life and health policies to middle-income families.

Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings Inc. acquired Sodem Diffusion S.A., a Switzerland-based maker of orthopedic surgical power tools. The company will be merged into Zimmer Surgical, a unit based in Dover, Ohio. Zimmer has been trying to diversify its business as sales of its hip and knee implants have stagnated in western markets.