The U.S. Senate voted to let regulators collect on a $6.4 billion fee agreement struck with Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., Medtronic Inc. and other companies to fund reviews of new drugs and medical devices through 2017.
Since the 1990s, the demographic makeup of new entrepreneurs has been steadily shifting toward baby boomers as they seek personal and financial fulfillment. Count Fountain Square Brewing Co.’s Bill Webster among them.
CityWay has landed a fine dining restaurant, a mixology bar, a Qdoba and a frozen yogurt shop as developer Buckingham Cos. turns its attention to the retail portion of the $155 million mixed-use project.
Indianapolis moved up two places on the American Fitness Index, but still ranks a lowly 43rd out of 50 large metros. The Index, released Monday by Indianapolis-based American College of Sports Medicine, gave each metro area a score based on their citizens’ preventive health behaviors, levels of chronic disease, access to health care and community resources, as well as policies that support physical activity. The Minneapolis area topped the list for the second year with a score of 76.4, followed by Washington, D.C., Boston and San Francisco. Indianapolis earned just half the points Minneapolis did. It ranked ahead of two of its Midwestern peers—Louisville and Detroit ranked 48 and 49, respectively—but behind most others. Running far ahead of Indianapolis were Pittsburgh (15th), Cincinnati (20th), Nashville (27th), Chicago (28th), Kansas City (29th), Milwaukee (30th), St. Louis (32nd) and Columbus, Ohio (40th). The analysis behind the index is supported by a grant from the Indianapolis-based WellPoint Foundation.
Biological research has been revolutionized over the past decade as large-scale machines have increasingly been replaced by tiny “lab on a chip” devices. Now West Lafayette-based Microfluidic Innovations LLC has developed and manufactured a system to help researchers program their own “lab on a chip” devices for experiments without turning to custom devices. Microfluidic Innovations' system, which was developed by researchers at Purdue University and Indiana University, allow researchers to vary the volumes and ratio of the fluids they mix, incubation and automatic fluid rotation. The chips have so far been used to detect glucose levels, sort particles and study enzyme and other chemical reactions. The small company received a $125,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund its development work.
While sales of Eli Lilly and Co.’s blood thinner Effient have grown recently, so have the looming challenges for the drug. On May 17, the blockbuster Plavix lost its U.S. patent protection, meaning Effient now competes against cheaper generic versions of the drug, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. Then on Monday, staff at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended approval for another competitor, Xarelto, made by New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson and Germany-based Bayer AG. A further competitor in the suddenly crowded blood thinner space is Brilinta, made by London-based AstraZeneca plc. None of the newer blood thinners are expected to match the $7.09 billion Plavix sold in 2011, reported Bloomberg News, citing Leerink Swann & Co. analyst Seamus Fernandez. He estimates Effient sales will peak in 2017 at $865 million, an increase from $303 million last year. Brilinta may reach $1.77 billion by then.
Most analysts agree with Eli Lilly and Co.’s prediction that, after tough years from 2012 to 2014, the drugmaker will begin growing sales and profits again. But in a new report, BMO Capital Markets predicts Lilly will get stuck at a reduced level of revenue and profit in 2014 and stay there for years.
Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG’s blood-thinner Xarelto should be approved to help prevent heart attacks and strokes in patients with a common condition, a U.S. regulatory report recommended.
The city of Indianapolis and private-sector players are lining up behind an effort to rebrand the Central Canal Towpath as an art-themed destination dubbed Art 2 Art by adding artwork and improving the trail.
Raising good cholesterol, a goal pursued by Eli Lilly and Co. as the next milestone in cardiac care, may not cut heart-attack risk, says a study that challenges the development of drugs that may someday generate billions of dollars in sales.
Eli Lilly and other big pharmaceutical companies are creating thousands of research jobs overseas as countries led by Singapore, Ireland and South Africa boost incentives.
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. and London-based AstraZeneca Plc aren't expected to have an easier time gaining more of the market for blood thinners dominated by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Plavix after the drug loses U.S. patent protection Thursday.
Louisville-based Neace Lukens has acquired Indianapolis-based Benefit Concepts Inc. to expand its benefits-consulting business in Indiana. Benefit Concepts' six employees will move into the Neace Lukens office at 6510 N. Shadeland Ave., reporting to Eric Chelovitz, Neace Lukens managing director of Indianapolis. Even before the acquisition, Neace Lukens had about 30 employees in Indiana. The firm was acquired in September by Florida-based AssuredPartners Inc. Numerous small-benefits consultants have sold their businesses in recent years to larger companies, first as employer efforts to change workers’ health habits hiked demands on brokers and now as the 2010 health reform law significantly curtails the health insurance commission system on which many health care brokers have survived for decades.
Purdue University's trustees approved plans Friday for a new campus medical clinic that administrators expect eventually will reduce the school's $151 million in annual health care costs for employees and their families. The clinic is scheduled to open this fall on the West Lafayette campus under a three-year contract paying about $14 million to a private provider, the Journal & Courier of Lafayette reported. The center will be available to all active employees and dependents covered by a Purdue medical plan. Primary and acute care will be offered, with patients not being charged for wellness coaching, chronic condition management and lab work for blood and other tests. Purdue's contract with clinic operator CHS of Reston, Va., is valued at $13.2 million to $14.7 million. The university's contribution to health care costs increased 6 percent, to $10,580 per employee, for 2012.
Bad news from a competitor has darkened the cloud over one of Eli Lilly and Co.’s most anticipated experimental drugs, evacetrapib, which has shown promise at boosting good cholesterol in heart patients. Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG said May 6 it has halted testing of its dalcetrapib, which the company had hoped would become a blockbuster, according to Bloomberg News. That move comes five years after New York-based Pfizer Inc. dumped a similar drug called torcetrapib due to safety issues. Lilly and New Jersey-based Merck & Co. Inc. still are developing their drugs in a class known as CETP inhibitors. Drugmakers have hoped that such drugs could replace statins as the next big medicine for heart patients. Statins, such as Pfizer’s Lipitor, were huge blockbusters, but most of them have now seen their patents expire. A Lilly spokeswoman told Bloomberg the Indianapolis-based company is committed to evacetrapib and plans to start a late-stage study in the second half of this year. A Phase 2 trial of the drug showed that it increases good cholesterol up to 129 percent and reduces bad cholesterol as much as 36 percent.
Motorists in central Indiana should expect to share the road with a lot of bicyclists during their morning and afternoon commutes Friday.
Treatments for central nervous system diseases have a huge potential payoff, analysts say. A hint of whether the gamble may pay off is due in the second half of this year, as Eli Lilly and Co. and Pfizer Inc. announce results for Alzheimer’s drugs that attack the same protein as Roche’s experimental drug.
Third Street Partners, a marketing firm that hoped to land half a million dollars in corporate sponsorships for the city of Indianapolis, has received a four-year contract extension to bring home red meat.
Officials consider expanding facility that got off to a slow start but began filling up last fall.
A second experimental cholesterol medicine in a once-promising class of drugs meant to replace blockbusters such as Lipitor has failed in testing, casting doubt on whether any of the drugs will ever make it to pharmacies. Eli Lilly is developing a similar drug.
For more than a year, Eli Lilly and Co. has been viewed by investors as a laggard stock with one, slim shot at producing a huge jackpot: its experimental Alzheimer’s drug. But now company leaders are trying to direct investor attention toward the drugmaker’s diabetes portfolio.
A major lender to Arcadia Resources Inc. has moved to foreclose on the struggling Indianapolis-based business, which in turn agreed to cease operations. Arcadia reported the foreclosure agreement with Dallas-based Comerica Bank, which Arcadia owed $11 million, in a May 3 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The closing represents the probable final fall for the once-promising health care company. Just two years ago, the company announced a huge expansion that it expected would add 930 jobs in Indiana by 2013. In order to satisfy a debt to one of its suppliers, Arcadia completed the sale of its DailyMed pharmacy business in February to a subsidiary of Illinois-based Walgreen Co. for just $2 million. That left Arcadia with its home health care and medical staffing businesses, which were being funded by an $11 million line of credit from Comerica. Arcadia already had drawn on the entire line of credit, which came due on April 30. The company owed about $30 million to three private equity firms that likely will not be repaid. The company had less than $1 million in assets, according to the SEC filing. In the nine months ended Dec. 31, Arcadia had $61.5 million in revenue and posted a loss of $13.5 million.
Eli Lilly and Co., Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca plc will contribute two dozen failed compounds to launch a new $20 million program in which government-sponsored scientists will see if the compounds show promise against other diseases than the ones for which they were first tested. If they do, it could help the drugmakers, which will still own the compounds, to bring them to market faster. The academic researchers would share in the profits of any drugs that make it to market. The program, kicked off May 3 by the National Institutes of Health, hopes to add more compounds soon. “It’s an opportunity to get more value out of our molecules,” said Jan Lundberg, president of Lilly Research Laboratories in Indianapolis. “Instead of parking them, we can let the academic community and NIH continue the testing to see if they have a significant benefit that we actually don’t know of today.”
A researcher at the Indiana University School of Medicine got national attention for his study suggesting that Tasers wielded by police can induce fatal heart attacks. Dr. Doulas Zipes, an emeritus professor of cardiology at the IU med school, found that in eight healthy men who became unconscious after being stunned by a Taser, six developed abnormal heart rhythms. All eight of the men, who ranged in age from 16 to 48, lost consciousness after receiving the shock; seven of them died. “This study doesn’t say that we should abandon using Taser devices, but it does show that users should exercise caution, avoid chest shocks and monitor the person after shock to ensure there are no adverse reactions,” Zipes said after his study was published in the journal Circulation. The results of Zipes' study were covered by USA Today, the New York Times and CBS News. A spokesman for Arizona-based Taser International Inc. told USA Today that the small number of cases in Zipes' study are not enough to draw broad conclusions. "There have been 3 million uses of Taser devices worldwide, with this case series reporting eight of concern," said Steve Tuttle, who also noted that Zipes has testified against Taser as an expert witness in legal cases brought against the company. "This article does not support a cause-effect association and fails to accurately evaluate the risks versus the benefits of the thousands of lives saved by police with Taser devices," Tuttle told the newspaper.
Authorities have made arrests in the 2010 theft of about $80 million in Eli Lilly and Co. prescription drugs from a Connecticut warehouse, according to the Associated Press. Two Cuban brothers were arrested in Florida and charged with helping steal the pharmaceuticals, including Lilly’s drugs Prozac and Zyprexa. The thieves broke into the Enfield warehouse of Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant Lilly in March 2010 and stole enough pills to fill a tractor-trailer. The drugs were believed to be destined for the black market, perhaps overseas. After cutting a hole in the roof of the industrial park warehouse, they lowered themselves to the floor, disabled the alarms and spent at least an hour loading pallets of antidepressants and other drugs into a vehicle at the loading dock, authorities said. Lilly plans to destroy the medicines once they are no longer needed as evidence.
Indianapolis-based HealthNet Inc. received a $155,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to renovate its Fountain Square facility to accommodate 1,150 more patient visits each year. HealthNet will use the money to turn a office space and a medical records storage area into three patient exam rooms. The center already handles more than 35,000 patient visits each year. The money is part of a series of grants to community health centers across the country. The funds were made available as part of the 2010 Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act. HealthNet operates 10 community health centers in the Indianapolis area.
