LOPRESTI: One Indy 500 race car will be covered with poignant stories
So maybe you’ve heard of Cutters Race Team. That’s the new idea where, for a few bucks, you can help sponsor an Indianapolis 500 race car.
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Beck’s plans $60M expansion, 100 more workers
Indiana-based Beck’s, the country’s largest family-owned seed company, said the expansion will include research labs, greenhouses, office space, and seed-processing facilities and equipment.
Company news
FAST BioMedical has been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a clinical trial of the diagnostic tool it is developing to measure plasma volume and kidney function in hospitalized patients. The grant, part of the federal Small Business Innovation Research program, adds to more than $16 million FAST has raised. The Indianapolis-based company said in January that it wants to raise as much as $25 million in the next two years to bring its product to market. “We believe that a quantitative measurement of a patient’s plasma and blood volume status and kidney function will have a demonstrable impact on outcomes in an area of medicine that has seen only modest advances in previous decades,” Dr. Bruce Molitoris, FAST’s medical director, said in a prepared statement. “Currently, physicians don’t have either a direct or timely way to assess these key parameters clinically.”
West Lafayette-based Endocyte Inc. could fetch a takeover bid at one of the industry’s highest premiums on record, according to Bloomberg News. Endocyte’s drug vintafolide has proved effective against both ovarian and lung cancers during clinical trials, raising the prospects for the company’s entire technology for developing targeted drugs for cancer and inflammatory diseases. Endocyte may command about $50 per share in a sale, up from its closing price of $21.96 on Friday, according to the average of four estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The estimates ranged from $35 per share to $65 per share. That would be the second-highest takeover premium on record among similar U.S. deals in the industry. According to a report by the Royal Bank of Canada, that could spark a takeover bid from Merck & Co. Inc., which has already paid for vintafolide’s late-stage development and will sell it as an ovarian cancer treatment in Europe. But Endocyte retains rights to the underlying technology and other drugs developed from it. AstraZeneca plc or Roche Holding AG also could be interested, according to a report from Cowen Group Inc. If vintafolide is approved for ovarian and lung cancer in the U.S. and Europe, it could bring in as much as $2 billion in revenue, according to Edward Tenthoff, a New York-based analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos. Endocyte is now developing another cancer drug that targets cells in the same way as vintafolide, though with a potentially more potent chemotherapy drug. “If you have other ones that might be better, that might be problematic for Merck,” said Robert Hazlett, a pharmaceutical analyst at Roth Capital Partners LLC. “It may need to seriously consider Endocyte.”
Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences LLC is likely to become a stand-alone public company in the next three years, according to some Wall Street analysts—if in a year or two Dow Agro’s profits are on course to double from current levels. Of course, the parent company of Dow Agro, Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co., could sell Indianapolis-based Dow Agro to another agricultural company, as it tried to do back in 2009. Analysts said Dow Chemical didn’t like the offers it received at the time, which was in the darkest days of the global recession. One reason for selling Dow Agro to another company is that its fast-growing seed business has yet to achieve the scale needed to support the massive R&D investments Dow has made in that area in recent years. Dow Agro’s $7 billion in annual revenue would rank it as the fifth-largest public company in Indiana, behind only WellPoint Inc., Eli Lilly and Co., Cummins Inc. and Steel Dynamics Inc. The company has annual cash flow of about $1 billion, and thinks a raft of new products can double those profits in five to seven years. Dow Agro employs about 1,800 people here, and its most recent hiring expansion touted annual wages from $65,000 to $95,000.
Northwestern football ruling seen changing college sports
In a stunning ruling that could revolutionize a college sports industry worth billions of dollars and have dramatic repercussions for the Indianapolis-based NCAA, a federal agency said Wednesday that players at Northwestern can unionize.
GE Aviation promises long-term commitment to state
GE Aviation chose Indiana for its $100 million plant partly because of the potential for hiring talent from and working on advanced-manufacturing research with Purdue University. The state’s business-friendly environment also played a role.
Apartment owner jumps into office biz with south-side rehab
Ardizzone Enterprises Inc. in Beech Grove is preparing to open a two-building, 63-suite office complex on U.S. 31 south of Interstate 465. The company has invested $4.2 million in the project.
Company news
A larger stock award boosted cash and stock payments to John Lechleiter, CEO of Eli Lilly and Co. in 2013, but overall compensation fell for the top executives of the Indianapolis-based drugmaker. Lechleiter was paid $11.22 million in salary, bonus, stock and perks, according to Lilly’s proxy statement filed Monday morning. That represented a 10-percent increase over his take of cash and stock in 2012. A rise in the value of Lechleiter’s pension boosted his 2012 total compensation more than $4.4 million, but his pension value remained flat in 2013 because Lilly raised the discount rate it used to calculate the present value of its pension liabilities. As a result, when pension values are included, Lechleiter’s total compensation actually fell 23 percent last year compared with the previous year. Smaller increases in pension values also depressed overall compensation of three other top executives at Lilly, ranging from as little as 1.5 percent for Jan Lundberg, president of Lilly Research Laboratories, to as much as 25 percent for Derica Rice, Lilly’s chief financial officer. When those actuarial fluctuations are excluded, compensation for those other executives remained flat from 2012 to 2013.
The stock price of West Lafayette-based Endocyte Inc. skyrocketed 92 percent Friday after the drug company got a thumbs up in Europe to market its first drug and received a new round of favorable clinical trial results. The drug, vintafolide, received a positive opinion from the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency to treat a small group of ovarian cancer patients who have tried other treatments. Assuming that opinion is followed by the European Commission, Endocyte and its partner Merck & Co. Inc. would begin selling the drug and its companion imaging agent later this year. The drug, which will be sold by Merck, has received the brand name of Vynfinit while the imaging agent will have the brand Folcepri, and will be sold by Endocyte. Also, West Lafayette-based Endocyte announced that vintafolide proved effective at treating non-small cell lung cancer in a Phase 2 trial. Patients receiving vintafolide and traditional chemotherapy agents had a 25-percent reduction in the risk of death or of their cancer worsening, compared with patients receiving only chemotherapy. The dual announcements, both released before the markets opened Friday, ignited investor interest. Endocyte’s shares closed at $28.17 on Friday, up from $14.64 the previous day.
A new master of public health program at the University of Indianapolis beginning this fall will prepare professionals to identify health disparities and develop community-based approaches to close the gaps. The two-year program will be conducted primarily online, and will ramp up to enroll more than 30 students. It will be the only one in Indiana focused on health disparities, which are the preventable differences in health among populations that can occur along lines of age, sex, ethnicity, geography and socioeconomic status. UIndy expects to develop other concentrations within the master of public health program as part of a broader expansion of its health sciences facilities, faculty and programs.
A European Medicines Agency panel recommended approval of a Type 2 diabetes drug from Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH and Eli Lilly and Co. that was delayed this month by U.S. regulators due to manufacturing deficiencies. The drug, empagliflozin, is expected to bring Indianapolis-based Lilly $519 million in annual revenue by 2019, according to an average of five analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg News. Empagliflozin would be sold under the brand name Jardiance, according to the European Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use, whose recommendation must still be OK’d by the European Commission. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said this month it wouldn’t approve the drug until Boehringer fixes problems disclosed in May after a 2012 inspection of a plant at the company’s headquarters in Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany.
People
Antonio Galindez, CEO of Dow AgroSciences LLC, will retire May 1 after nearly five years leading the agricultural biotech company. Tim Hassinger, Dow Agro’s global commercial leader and global leader of the company’s crop protection business unit, will be the new CEO of the Indianapolis-based subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co. Galindez joined Dow in 1983 as a field sales representative for agricultural products in Spain and held several leadership positions before becoming CEO. Hassinger has worked for Dow since 1984. Dow Agro, which has about 1,800 employees in Indianapolis, had global sales of $7.1 billion in 2013.
Methodist Health Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital, has hired five new staff members. Laura Gaybrick, Jane Manning, Jama Pryor and Dana Shank all worked in other parts of the IU Health organization. Gaybrick is now the foundation’s director of innovation and neuroscience development officer. Manning is a development officer. Pryor is director of marketing and communications. And Shank is a major gifts officer. In addition, the Methodist Health Foundation hired Kathleen Custer, formerly of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, as executive assistant.
Dr. Aaron Carroll, a pediatrician and the director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research at the Indiana University School of Medicine, has been named a regular contributor to The Upshot, a new publication of The New York Times. Carroll is co-editor of a blog on health economics called The Incidental Economist, along with the blog’s creator, Dr. Austin Frakt. Both Carroll and Frakt will contribute to The Upshot, a data-driven site focusing on politics, policy and economic analysis.
Common Core spawns widespread political fights
More than five years after U.S. governors began a bipartisan effort to set new standards in American schools, the Common Core initiative has morphed into a political tempest fueling division among Republicans.
Dow Agro CEO retiring as divesture speculation returns
Dow AgroSciences is getting a new chief, the company said Friday. Meanwhile, the CEO of parent company Dow Chemical says Dow Agro could be sold off in a year or two.
Discovery may be key to Alzheimer’s treatment
Scientists have discovered that a gene-regulating protein that protects the developing brain of a fetus resurfaces in old age and may stave off dementia, a finding that could open a new path in Alzheimer’s research.
Purdue, Indiana universities churning out more patents, startups
Unbelievable as it would have sounded even a few years ago, Purdue and IU now both produce more startup companies annually than most of the schools at the heart of the famed entrepreneurial hubs in Colorado, Utah and North Carolina.
Good news, bad news in state employment report
The Hoosier state added 4,600 jobs in the manufacturing sector in January, the most in the country. But Indiana also lost 7,100 private sector jobs, leaving the state at a net loss of 2,500 jobs for the month.
Hurdles remain for Roche Diagnostics on HPV test
Roche could enjoy a huge increase in sales of its HPV tests if all doctors and women followed a recommendation issued last week by an advisory committee at the FDA. But wrinkles in the U.S. health care system still present several big obstacles.
Verizon promising to go faster, farther than previous IndyCar title sponsors
The motorsports marketing firm representing Verizon says the wireless communication firm won't be like past IndyCar Series title sponsors Pep Boys, Northern Light and Izod.
State tech report highlights strong demand for computer skills
Computer-related employment in Indiana grew six times faster than state's overall job market in the five years after the recession hit, a new report from TechPoint says.UPDATE: Mayor picks GM site for criminal justice complex
Mayor Greg Ballard will recommend that a proposed criminal justice complex be located on the former GM stamping plant on the western side of downtown—not the airport property that ranked highest in a market study.
KETZENBERGER: It isn’t about the destination; it’s about the quest
When I was a kid with a tank full of cheap gas and nothing but time on my hands, I’d drive all over the countryside trying to get lost.