Paul, Lilly put trust in AstraZeneca vet
Eli Lilly and Co.’s top scientist, Dr. Steve Paul, will have to trust a company outsider to see if his aggressive transformation
of Lilly’s research and development arm pays off.
Eli Lilly and Co.’s top scientist, Dr. Steve Paul, will have to trust a company outsider to see if his aggressive transformation
of Lilly’s research and development arm pays off.
Does Gov. Mitch Daniels’ economic development strategy emphasize job attraction at the expense of entrepreneurship?
The good news continues for Rolls-Royce Corp.’s Indianapolis operations, which this week received an $11.1 million contract
to make gas turbine engines for the Army’s OH-58D Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters.
Watanabe, son of the late Eli Lilly and Co. scientist, has hired investment bankers to help raise $10 million for his business, Encompass Media.
After the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a sweeping health care overhaul, leaders of Indiana’s two
largest health care entities turned their hopes to the U.S. Senate to give them a bill more to their liking.
Eli Lilly and Co. has agreed to pay Utah $24 million to settle a lawsuit claiming the company improperly marketed the antipsychotic
drug Zyprexa.
Indianapolis-based Arcadia Resources Inc. has appointed former Indianapolis Mayor Steve Goldsmith to its
board of directors. Goldsmith, who served as mayor from 1992 to 2000, is a professor in the American
Government Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He will replace Tres Lund, a
major Arcadia shareholder.
Dr. Christine Davis has joined St. Vincent Physician
Network in Indianapolis. The internist received her medical degree from the University of Louisville
School of Medicine.
Community Health Network promoted Jon Fohrer to CEO of its ambulatory
services. He has served as network vice president of ambulatory services since November 2002 and led the orthopedic
service line since 2006. Fohrer holds a bachelor’s degree from Ball State University and an MBA from Butler University.
Indianapolis-based Clarian Health has named Mike Yost its executive director of marketing. Yost was
a brand leader at locally based Eli Lilly and Co. for its Zyprexa and Cymbalta drugs.
Clarian also named attorney Tory Castor its vice president of government affairs. Castor worked at Hays
Murray Castor LLP and Bingham McHale.
A panel of medical advisers recommended against wider use of Zimmer Holdings Inc.’s spine stabilization
device, according to Reuters. In a 5-1 vote, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s advisory panel said the data for Zimmer’s
Dynesys Spinal System were unclear and left them with questions about the device’s durability and propensity to break.
Warsaw-based Zimmer already markets the device, which is a series of screws and flexible spacers that help align and support
the spine, for patients who have received fusion surgery. The company is seeking
FDA approval to market Dynesys for stand-alone use. FDA officials will weigh the
panel’s recommendation before making their final approval decision.
New Jersey-based Enzon
Pharmaceuticals Inc. has agreed to sell its specialty pharmaceutical business, along with its
Indianapolis manufacturing facility, to Italy-based Sigma-tau Group. As of January 2008, Enzon’s
facility in Indianapolis employed about 150 workers. It made four medicines, which treated certain kinds of leukemia, meningitis,
fungal infections and the immunodeficiency malady known as “bubble boy disease.” Sigma-tau
paid $300 million for the business, as well as royalties and other payments contingent upon future sales
and development achievements.
Arcadia Resources Inc. sold nearly 16 million
shares of stock in a registered direct offering that raised $11.1 million. Arcadia Chief Financial Officer
Matt Mittendorf said the Indianapolis-based company would use the cash to fund the rollout of its DailyMed pharmacy service
to customers of Indianapolis-based health insurer WellPoint Inc. in Virginia and soon
in California. The company needed more cash, as its reserves had dwindled to $517,000 at the end of the
second quarter, down from $2.4 million a year earlier.
California-based Beckman Coulter
Inc., which makes biomedical testing instrument systems, said it is relocating its precision
plastics injection molding operation to Park 100. The move will add about 100 jobs to the 400 people the company already employs
in Indianapolis. The jobs will pay $22.30 an hour, on average. In 2007, Beckman Coulter closed its 220-employee centrifuge
development and manufacturing facility in Palo Alto, Calif., and moved operations to the Indianapolis area.
For
the 14th straight year, St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital won a Consumer Choice award from the National Research
Corp. The award identifies hospitals that health care consumers have chosen as having the highest quality and image in more
than 300 U.S. markets. No other Indianapolis hospitals won the award this year.
As pharmaceutical
giants re-evaluate their pipelines and seek to sell off products that no longer fit their strategies, it gives opportunities
for pharmaceutical startups. Such divestiture of pharmaceutical products will be discussed Tuesday at the Life Sciences Lunch
at the Barnes & Thornburg LLP law firm in downtown Indianapolis. The lunch will include three speakers:
Reed Tarwater, director of pharmaceutical consulting services at Carmel-based Anson Group LLC; Ron
Ellis, CEO of Endocyte Inc. in West Lafayette; and Eli Lilly and Co.‘s Pete Robins. The
lunch costs $10 per person and begins at 11:30 a.m.
Former President George H.W. Bush will come to Indianapolis
Nov. 19 to speak at a $250-per-person fund raiser for Alzheimer’s research. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Indiana
Alzheimer Disease Center at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Indiana Chapter of the
Alzheimer’s Association. Money will also go to the Deane F. Johnson Center Foundation at the University of
California at Los Angeles, a clinical trial center that supports the research of such companies as Indianapolis-based
Eli Lilly and Co. Bush’s speech, which will occur at the Indiana Roof Ballroom, is sponsored
locally by Fishers-based Ambassador Healthcare and the Central Indiana Community
Foundation. Ticket information can be found here.
Drugmaker and health insurer bemoan aspects of House health reform bill and hope Senate crafts more industry-friendly bill.
Rolls-Royce Corp. said Monday that the U.S. Air Force has awarded its Indianapolis operations an $8.5 million contract to
provide spare engine parts for the C-130J military transport aircraft.
Mike’s Express Carwash uses a lot of water. There’s just no getting around it. So when automated systems engineer
Ryan Binkley looked for ways to conserve resources, he focused on the company’s irrigation systems.
Eli Lilly and Co.’s Byetta won a new market approval, which the company hopes will reverse the diabetes
drug’s recent sales decline. But the drug also was the subject of a new alert about kidney problems in patients taking
the drug. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration OK’d Byetta to be used sooner in patients suffering from poor blood
sugar control. But the FDA also told doctors to be alert about kidney problems of some patients taking Byetta.
Before, the FDA called for Byetta to be used only after patients tried other drugs without success. Byetta, which Lilly sells
via a partnership with San Diego-based Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc., suffered a 5-percent decline in U.S. sales in the 12 months
year, to $171 million in the third quarter. Worldwide Byetta sales totaled $593 million through
the first nine months of this year, a 5-percent increase compared with the same period in 2008.
Lilly
also will trim 191 sales jobs in Indiana as part of a company-wide restructuring announced in September that ultimately
will result in 5,500 job cuts by the end of 2011. The pharmaceutical giant will trim its osteoporosis, diabetes and neuroscience
sales forces, which are listed as working out of the Lilly Technology Center on South Harding Street. The workers’ last day
will be Dec. 31.
Local health care information technology professionals will discuss efforts to bring Indiana health
care into the digital age at a breakfast meeting on Friday. The panelists will include Jane Niederberger, president of Indianapolis-based
My Health Care Manager LLC, Stacy Cook, a physician attorney at
the Indianapolis law firm of Barnes & Thornburg LLP, Michael E. Rudicle, a director at
the local office of New York-based accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and Jack Horner, CEO of Major
Hospital in Shelbyville. The meeting, part of the New Economy New Rules series, will be held at the downtown offices
of the Barnes & Thornburg law firm.
Wishard Foundation said it has received a $6 million
grant from the Indianapolis-based Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation
to help fund construction of a new Wishard Hospital. Voters on Tuesday approved a new $754 million hospital
for Wishard Health Services. The $6 million grant is the single largest philanthropic contribution Wishard
has received in its 150-year history.
The FDA said a new titanium implant
to re-stabilize the spine, made by Zimmer Holdings Inc., showed good
results in a clinical trial. But the FDA also noted that physicians who had received consulting payments from Warsaw-based
Zimmer turned in patient results better than physicians who were not paid by Zimmer, according to the Associated Press. The
FDA noted the correlation was not statistically significant, but it will asks a panel of orthopedic specialists to weigh in
on the new device and decide whether Zimmer should provide more data before approving it for sale. The agency is not required
to follow the group’s advice, though it usually does.
Eli Lilly and Co. has notified the state that it plans to eliminate 191 sales jobs as part of a company-wide restructuring
announced
in September
that ultimately will result in 5,500 job cuts by the end of 2011.
Lilly is opening the San Diego biotech center a year after launching a biotech R&D center in Indianapolis.
Long tracking the emergence of information technology firms involved in the health and life sciences sector, the state’s
IT trade group, TechPoint, is undergoing a mitosis of sorts to help fuel the trend. It has created Advancing
Life Science & Health Care Information Technology, or ALHIT, which will focus on growing this subset of the IT realm.
Count Butler University basketball on the short list of teams that could make it to the Final Four.
As it shrinks its work force, Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Co. will move more than 1,000 employees to its corporate
center
by mid-2010.
The drug maker said its settlement with South Carolina is the largest such settlement it has reached over Zyprexa. It previously
settled with the state of Connecticut for $30 million.
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said Friday that the state has reached a $45 million settlement with drug maker
Eli Lilly and Co. over the company’s marketing of an anti-psychotic drug.
Sales of Eli Lilly and Co.’s newest drug were an afterthought during its Oct. 21 report on third-quarter earnings. The blood thinner Effient totaled up $22.6 million in sales—a mere 0.4 percent of Lilly’s total for
the quarter.