Regus Group plc, which has other locations in the Indianapolis area, has taken more than 10,000 square feet downtown to open its latest flex-office center, where business owners can rent space by the day, week or month.
Lantus, which garnered $7.8 billion in sales for Paris-based Sanofi in 2013, loses patent protection in Europe in May next year.
Hendricks Regional Health is extending its reach farther west via a collaboration with Putnam County Hospital in Greencastle. On July 10, the two hospitals will open a new obstetrics clinic, called Partners in Care, to provide prenatal care for low-income pregnant women. The clinic will be staffed by a Hendricks Regional Health nurse midwife, and two physicians from the Hendricks Regional Health Medical Group. Patients of Partners in Care will receive prenatal services at Putnam County Hospital, while deliveries will take place at Hendricks Regional Health in Danville. The idea of starting a clinic was boosted by a needs assessment conducted by DePauw University in Greencastle, which confirmed a shortage of prenatal care in Putnam County.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that closely held corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of Obamacare’s requirement that they cover contraceptives for women at no charge. According to the Associated Press, the justices' 5-4 decision is the first time the high court has ruled that profit-seeking businesses can hold religious views under federal law. And it means the Obama administration must search for a different way of providing free contraception to women who are covered under objecting companies' health insurance plans. Contraception is among a range of preventive services that must be provided at no extra charge under the health care law that President Barack Obama signed in 2010 and the Supreme Court upheld two years later. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, which stressed that the ruling applies only to corporations that are under the control of just a few people in which there is no essential difference between the business and its owners.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence hired Carmel psychiatrist Dr. John Wernert to take over the state's Family and Social Services Administration and tapped former FSSA Secretary Michael Gargano to oversee Pence’s Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0. Wernert is the medical director of medical management at Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis and was the medical director for behavioral health integration for the Franciscan Alliance health system. He'll replace outgoing Secretary Debra Minott, who unexpectedly announced her resignation in June; neither Pence nor Minott have explained her sudden departure. Gargano, who led the agency until Pence took office last January, is returning in the new role overseeing Pence's insurance expansion plan. The Pence administration is in the middle of pitching the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Indiana's proposal to use the state-run Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0 to expand Medicaid. If the application is approved, residents earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level would be allowed to enroll in a hybrid-health savings account plan. The state estimates that more than 457,000 low-income residents could enroll in the program by 2020.
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. received European backing for a biosimilar version of Lantus insulin, a mega-blockbuster made by France-based Sanofi that has never faced generic competition. According to Bloomberg News, Lilly’s Abasria insulin was recommended by the European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use for the treatment of diabetes. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, usually follows the panel’s recommendation. Lantus, which garnered $7.8 billion in sales for Paris-based Sanofi in 2013, loses patent protection in Europe in May next year. The U.S. patent on Lantus expires in February, but generic competition there may be delayed after Sanofi in January said it was suing Indianapolis-based Lilly over its plans to introduce a version in the U.S. Sales of the drug in Europe were less than 15 percent of the total in 2013, because the price of the drug is far lower than in the United States, which accounted for almost two-thirds of total Lantus sales, said Mark Clark, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG in London. That may limit the erosion of Lantus sales in Europe, he said. Lilly is also trying to introduce a brand-name drug that would compete with Lantus. Last month, it released study results suggesting its once-a-day insulin injection, Peglispro, was better than Lantus in controlling patients’ blood sugar. Lilly has said it will file for U.S. approval to sell that drug in the first quarter of next year.
The areas around each of Indiana’s research university campuses—Bloomington, Indianapolis, Lafayette and South Bend—all boast outsize concentration of life sciences workers. Yet the state still lags on research, development and investment funding.
Even before taking over, Eddie Pillow is making changes at the logistics and courier company his dad started in 1988.
Indiana physicians and research organizations reaped more than $25 million in payments from 15 pharmaceutical firms in 2012, according to the most recent data made available by the not-for-profit group ProPublica. Lilly was the biggest spender and the IU medical school was the biggest recipient.
The rate of bike commuting in Indianapolis has more than doubled since 2000, but many cyclists still don’t know—or follow—some basic guidelines that can keep them safe.
Fletcher Place on the southeastern edge of downtown for years served as little more than a pass-through for folks traveling between downtown and Fountain Square. But the triangle-shaped historic neighborhood is starting to carve out its own identity by drawing more residents and visitors to patronize the restaurants and drinking establishments sprouting along Virginia Avenue.
The race, which takes place the day before the annual NASCAR Brickyard 400 race at IMS, will be called the Lilly Diabetes 250.
An airport near Zionsville is upping the ante for Indianapolis International Airport reliever fields.
Assembly Pharmaceuticals Inc., which had offices in Indiana, has merged with New York-based Ventrus Biosciences, a publicly traded drug development firm, to create Assembly Biosciences. The new company trades on the NASDAQ stock market under the ticker symbol ASMB. Assembly has been developing antiviral drugs focused on hepatitis B based on the scientific research of Adam Zlotnick, a professor of molecular and cellular biochemistry at the Indiana University Bloomington campus. Zlotnick co-founded Assembly in 2012 with IU chemist Richard DiMarchi; IU biochemist William Turner; Dr. Uri Lopatin, an infection disease researcher based in San Francisco; and Indianapolis entrepreneur Derek Small. Small will be chief operating officer of Assembly Biosciences.
Eli Lilly and Co. signed a $45 million drug-development deal with United Kingdom-based biotech company Immunocore Ltd., according to the Wall Street Journal. Immunocore is trying to develop injectable cancer treatments that would direct the immune system’s T cells to get inside cancer cells and kill them. Immunocore will receive $15 million from Lilly upfront for each of three drug programs that have not yet entered human testing. If Lilly decides to take the treatments into the next stage of development, Immunocore can either receive a fee of $10 million to co-invest and develop the drugs or let Lilly develop the drugs while still retaining a right to future royalties if the drugs hit the market. Last year, Immunocore signed partnership deals with four other drug companies: Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Adaptimmune. Immunocore and Adaptimmune were previously one company called Avidex, formed based on patents licensed from the University of Oxford.
Indiana will be one of up to 20 new states in which Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group will compete on the Obamacare exchanges later this year. The health insurance giant sold on just four Obamacare exchanges for 2014, but will greatly expand its activity selling policies for 2015, according to the Associated Press. In Indiana, UnitedHealth has told the Indiana Department of Insurance it expects to sign up about 5,000 customers via plans sold under the All Savers brand. UnitedHealth representatives have told Indiana health insurance brokers that the company will make plans available for 2015, even though the specific states in which UnitedHealth will sell on the Obamacare exchanges has not been publicly released by the company. The exchanges, which are online marketplaces for health insurance, are the only place consumers can access Obamacare’s generous tax credits to reduce the cost of health coverage. UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley told Wall Street analysts on July 17 that the exchanges will become a more established part of future health care benefits, and UnitedHealth doesn’t want to enter those markets too late.
This isn’t what St. Vincent Health wanted. The Indianapolis-based hospital system’s clerical error of May 5, which sent 63,325 letters about patients' upcoming appointments to the wrong people, is now being cited by the information technology world as an example of the surge in data breaches. Trade publication PC World referred to the data breach at the St. Vincent Breast Health Center in an article headlined, “The 5 biggest data breaches of 2014 (so far)” (although the St. Vincent breach, in sheer number of people affected, wasn’t actually one of the five largest breaches). Also, SC Magazine, a trade publication for IT security professionals, flagged the St. Vincent breach and even posted the letter the hospital system sent to its patients. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, there have been 21 percent more data breaches publicly reported in the United States so far this year, compared with the same period in 2013.
Home improvement retail giant Lowe’s Companies Inc. plans to open a call center on the northwest side of Indianapolis that could employ as many as 1,000 workers, sources familiar with the deal said Monday.
The home-improvement retail titan plans to begin hiring immediately for the center on the northeast side, pledging to employ as many as 1,000 workers making wages of $10 to $14 per hour.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials are not holding out much hope the NASCAR Sprint Cup race they host will ever return to its glory days when it drew more than 250,000 fans annually.
Indianapolis-based Lilly and Co. lost 17 percent of its revenue during the second quarter as U.S. patents expired on its bestselling drugs Cymbalta and Evista.
In February, Indiana Limestone Co. filed for bankruptcy. But two months later, Chicago-based Wynnchurch Capital Ltd. bought the quarry company out of bankruptcy. ILC is now digging out and looking at a brighter horizon.
The Indiana University School of Medicine plans to hire 100 research professors over the next five years in a bid to vault into the top 25 medical schools.
The Indiana University School of Medicine plans to hire 100 research professors over the next five years in a bid to vault into the top 25 medical schools. If successful, that recruitment drive could boost by 15 percent the number of research-oriented faculty at IU and bring in an extra $35 million to $40 million in annual research funding. If the plan plays out as Dean Dr. Jay L. Hess hopes, the school could become a closer partner with drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co., medical-device maker Cook Group Inc. and other major life sciences companies. Hess’ plans are actually a bit more modest than those advanced by his predecessor, Dr. Craig Brater, who retired last year. Brater wanted IU to become one of the 10 most richly funded medical schools for research, up from about 40th now. To get there, he estimated, the school needed to recruit 400 researchers, on top of the 700 it employs today. But Hess noted that IU would need hundreds of millions of dollars more per year in funding from the National Institutes of Health—IU receives about $100 million per year—to reach that level.
Four doctors who supposedly ran a system of clinics aimed at helping addicts kick painkillers were illegally selling a drug that's supposed to aid in rehabilitation, federal authorities said Friday after raiding the doctors’ clinics in Carmel, Noblesville, Muncie, Kokomo and Centerville. According to the Associated Press, Dr. Larry Ley, 68, of Noblesville, was being held on $1 million bond on drug-dealing charges in Hamilton County Jail. Prosecutors say Ley led the operation. A dozen additional suspects, including three other doctors, are under arrest or sought by police. The probable cause affidavit said patients would go to clinics operated by organizations called the Drug and Opiate Recovery Network or Living Life Clean and pay cash for prescriptions of Suboxone, a drug that can be used to treat addictions to opioid painkillers or heroin. The clinics did not accept insurance. Patients allegedly did not undergo medical or mental exams, and weren't asked to provide medical histories. Office employees allegedly handed out pre-signed prescriptions, the affidavit alleges. In 2013, Ley allegedly wrote nearly 8,500 prescriptions, generating an income of $718,000, the affidavit says.
Terre Haute-based Union Health System will cut 150 positions system-wide by the end of the year, according to the Tribune-Star. The cut represents a 5-percent reduction of the system’s 3,000 workers and is projected to produce savings of $200 million by 2020, according to a letter sent Thursday by CEO Pat Board to the hospital system’s employees. “We face numerous challenges due to changes in the healthcare environment and its impact on Union Health System, which include a shift to more outpatient services and declining reimbursement." Union Health includes Union Hospital in Terre Haute and Union Clinton Hospital in Vermillion County north of Terre Haute in western Indiana.
Community Health Network Foundation has been awarded a $1.5 million federal grant to discover ways to deliver better care at lower cost while strengthening its nursing staff. The Health Resources and Services Administration grant will fund a three-year project to encourage nurses to deliver care as teams at Community East Family Medicine Center and then replicate the model they create at seven Community hospitals and other sites of care. The grant covers 88 percent of the project’s estimated costs, and Community will provide the balance of the funding.
Dow AgroSciences LLC reported second-quarter sales of $1.9 billion, an increase of 3 percent over last year's second period. The Indianapolis-based subsidiary of Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co. reported quarterly earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, of $281 million. That was down $9 million, or 3 percent, from a year ago. Crop-protection sales rose 3 percent in the quarter, led by insecticides, which reported double-digit gains in all regions. Quarterly seed sales increased 3 percent, with growth in corn and soybeans in North America and Latin America.
Results of a Roche clinical trial mirror those produced by an experimental Lilly drug two years ago. Lilly executives say that validates their approach in the multi-billion-dollar race to market the first drug to reverse Alzheimer’s.
With federal research funding declining, drug companies are taking a larger role funding the medical research happening at IU and universities around the country. That’s not the same thing as paying to market drugs, but it’s hardly without controversy.
