Threat-detection tech firm plans to create 84 jobs
Lafayette-based Emerging Threats Pro LLC said it will invest $967,000 to open an outpost in the Parkwood Crossing office park in Carmel.
Lafayette-based Emerging Threats Pro LLC said it will invest $967,000 to open an outpost in the Parkwood Crossing office park in Carmel.
The Indiana University School of Medicine will receive nearly $8.5 million from the estate of the late Dr. Suzanne Buckner Knoebel, a cardiologist and longtime professor at the medical school. She died in July at the age of 87. The money will flow into two funds, one of which supports cardiovascular researchers and the other that will pay for cardiology professors to receive training in new techniques and other educational programs. Knoebel was an IU medical school professor from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. In 1982, she became the first female president of the American College of Cardiology.
The Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center will receive $7.8 million over the next five years from the National Cancer Institute to support its research. The grant follows up on a previous grant in 2008 from NCI, which is one of the National Institutes of Health. NCI has designated the IU Simon Cancer Center as one of 68 cancer centers across the country that focus on the rapid translation of research discoveries to directly benefit people with cancer. Purdue University also operates an NCI-designated cancer center, although only the IU center provides care to Indiana cancer patients. The IU Simon Cancer Center includes nearly 200 researchers, who attract $61 million per year in grants.
The Indiana Family of Social Services Administration awarded Purdue Healthcare Advisors at Purdue University a $2.3 million grant to keeping helping independent, rural and urban health care providers to use electronic medical records in ways the federal government defines as “meaningful.” Purdue Healthcare Advisors started its work in February 2010 after Purdue received a $14 million federal grant authorized by the 2009 stimulus bill. Providers eligible for Purdue’s help practice in small or independent groups, or in federally qualified health clinics, community health clinics or rural health clinics.
Gov. Mike Pence named Dr. Jerome Adams to be commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health, replacing Dr. William VanNess, who announced his resignation in August. Adams is a professor of clinical anesthesia at the Indiana University School of Medicine and a staff anesthesiologist at Eskenazi Health. He plans to continue working at Eskenazi even as he serves his role as health commissioner. Previously, he was an anesthesiologist at Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie and a physician rapid responder at Indianapolis Orthopaedic Hospital.
Medicare will reduce payments to 68 Indiana hospitals—a 62-percent increase from last year—for having too many patients return within 30 days.
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. was ordered by a jury to pay more than $2 million to a woman who claimed the company’s Actos diabetes medicine caused her bladder cancer, in the latest of thousands of lawsuits involving the drug to go to trial.
Turnout in the recent vote in Scotland over whether to secede from the United Kingdom was reported to be 85 percent. Turnout in the most recent primary election in Ferguson, Mo., was 12 percent. These are undoubtedly the “poles”—the extremes. Yet … Americans seem evenly divided between those working to increase voter turnout—the League of […]
Nearly two years have passed since Eli Lilly and Co. CEO John Lechleiter called for creating a “world-class” life sciences research institute in Indianapolis, and now the fledgling Indiana Biosciences Research Institute is on the verge of naming its first leader. That choice of a chief executive, expected before Thanksgiving, will telegraph a critical signal […]
Amazon has been developing its own local services marketplace. Yelp is the leading consumer-review service in the retail space. Website Holding company IAC, meanwhile, has a big stash of cash and owns competitor HomeAdvisor.com.
WellPoint created an HMO joint venture with seven big hospitals in Los Angeles. Could it do something similar here? Quite possibly.
Endocyte’s lead drug showed big impact on lung cancer patients, but some analysts think the company should scrap it for a newer drug that is more powerful.
Major Health Partners will construct an $89 million hospital on the north edge of Shelbyville, after nearly a decade of shifting services to that location. According to the Shelbyville News, Major’s board voted Sept. 22 to build a 300,000-square-foot facility in the Intelliplex technology park along Interstate 74 and move from downtown Shelbyville. Construction on the project could begin as early as next month and take about two years to complete. Major first revealed detailed plans for the hospital six weeks ago, but the project could not go forward until the board’s 6-0 vote. The hospital will include 56 beds, all in private rooms, and 38 outpatient observation beds. Major’s current hospital has 72 beds in mostly semi-private rooms. When completed, the new complex will also have four operating rooms and house 57 physicians and a staff of about 930.
Researchers at Purdue University and the Indiana University School of Medicine have received a $3.7 million grant to study how blueberries reduce bone loss in postmenopausal women. The five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine will pay for researchers to conduct human trials aimed at finding the most effective varieties and dosage levels of blueberriers for reducing bone loss. “This is one of the most compelling avenues to pursue in natural products research because blueberries would be a new alternative to osteoporosis drugs and their side effects,” said Connie Weaver, the head of Purdue’s department of nutrition science and one of the grant recipients.
Bernard Health, a health benefits brokerage firm based in Tennessee, opened its second retail store in Indianapolis last week. The 1,270-square-foot store is downtown on Pennsylvania Street, just north of Washington Street. Bernard, which now employs seven here in Indianapolis, opened its first local retail store in the Nora neighborhood in 2012 and now has 12 stores nationwide. For a fee, Bernard helps individuals and small businesses evaluate and purchase health benefits. It is one of several new models being tried out by benefits brokers in Indiana to adapt to new rules and opportunities under Obamacare.
The Indiana University School of Medicine received gifts totaling $1 million on the 40th anniversary of Dr. Larry Einhorn’s discovery of a drug combination therapy that nearly cured testicular cancer. In September 1974, Einhorn, a professor at the IU medical school, first tested the cancer drug cisplatin with two other cancer drugs—a combination that boosted survival rates from the cancer from about 20 percent to 95 percent. According to the medical school, 300,000 patients have survived testicular cancer after receiving the drug therapy Einhorn discovered. The most famous is Lance Armstrong, the cycling champion stripped of his victories after admitting to doping. The gifts will help launch a gene sequencing program among survivors so future patients can be given treatments that reduce side effects and complications. Half the donated money came from A. Farhad Moshiri of Monaco, who previously donated $2 million to IU. Another $300,000 will come from the children of local real estate magnate Sidney Eskenazi and his wife, Lois.
An industry coalition is launching an attack on the ‘AIG effect’ in the hope of restoring a lucrative niche.
Ron Ellis has been CEO of the drug discovery firm Endocyte Inc. since 1996. When he moved to West Lafayette to take the job, he wouldn’t let his wife paint the interior of their new house—for fear he’d be looking for a new job soon. Endocyte has yet to generate any revenue.
Paying off medical debts over time is now a common experience for families with health insurance and becoming more so. And that is inducing big changes in the health care marketplace.
Average driver wages may rise as much as 6 percent in 2014, said Kenny Vieth, president of Columbus, Indiana-based Americas Commercial Transportation Research Co.
For Indiana employers with fewer than 10 workers, health insurance premiums have risen 11.5 percent, on average, from 2001 to 2013. That ranked second-highest among all states.
The first act of IRT’s “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” might make you wonder why the show isn’t produced more often. The second act makes it clear.
A Purdue University startup is developing drugs that could reduce a neurotoxin believed to play a part in multiple sclerosis, neuropathic pain and Parkinson’s disease. Neuro Vigor LLC formed last year, based on the research of Riyi Shi, a Purdue professor of neuroscience and biomedical engineering. The company is now trying to raise money to help it prepare for and conduct human trials of one of its drugs. Its drugs are designed to reduce the level of acrolein in patients’ brains. "Our preclinical research has shown by lowering acrolein we could much reduce the symptoms and pain of neurological diseases and injuries,” Shi said in a statement. He co-founded Neuro Vigor along with Mark Van Fleet, a senior executive with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and David Giddings, the former president of Boehringer Mannheim Corp.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture approved Dow AgroSciences LLC’s Enlist corn and soybean traits in the United States. Indianapolis-based Dow Agro now awaits action by the Environmental Protection Agency to register the companion herbicide to the Enlist traits, which is a new version of the 2,4-D weed killer that's been around since the 1940s. The EPA has said it will rule this fall on Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences' application to market the chemical. After the EPA acts, Dow Agro said, it will update its plans to bring Enlist to market in 2015. The agriculture industry has been anxiously awaiting the approvals, as many weeds have become resistant to glyphosate, a herbicide commonly used on corn and soybeans now. Dow Agro, which is a subsidiary of Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co., also formed a strategic research and development alliance last week with Greenfield-based Elanco Animal Health. The two companies will work to develop products that enable livestock producers to increase meat and milk production. Elanco, a subsidiary of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., was a co-founder of Dow Agro in 1989 but sold its stake to Dow Chemical in 1997.
Eli Lilly and Co. agreed to pay AstraZeneca plc as much as $500 million to jointly develop an experimental oral drug for Alzheimer’s, according to Bloomberg News. The two companies will work together to develop AZD3293, which belongs to a class of drugs called BACE inhibitors that block production of amyloid, a protein that causes plaque to build up in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients. The two companies will work to begin studies in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease. Lilly will lead clinical development while AstraZeneca will be responsible for manufacturing. London-based AstraZeneca will receive the first milestone payment of $50 million in the first half of 2015 and the companies will share equally all future costs and potential global revenue. Indianapolis-based Lilly had been developing its own BACE inhibitor, but it failed in clinical testing because of safety issues. The only drugs approved for Alzheimer’s merely ease symptoms for a few months while the debilitating brain disease progresses. Still, they generate more than $5 billion annually.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new injectable diabetes drug from Eli Lilly and Co. for adults with Type 2 diabetes, according to Bloomberg News. The drug, Trulicity, is part of a new class of medicines called GLP-1 agonists, which spur the pancreas to create extra insulin after meals. Indianapolis-based Lilly is counting on new drugs like Trulicity to replace falling revenue from blockbusters like the antidepressant Cymbalta, which is facing cheaper generic competition after the expiration of its patent. Analysts predict the drug could eventually bring in $700 million to as much as $1.3 billion annually in revenue. The drug will bear a boxed warning — the most serious type — highlighting that rats tested with Trulicity had cases of thyroid cancer, though it's unclear whether they were caused by the drug. Lilly will be required to conduct follow-up studies on cases of thyroid cancer, heart problems and other potential safety issues with the drug.
As local hospitals try to offer package deals with upfront prices on joint replacement surgeries, they're struggling with the reality that patients' other health conditions can significantly increase their cost of care.
Lilly is finally putting meat on the bones of its predictions about its experimental diabetes and cancer drugs. That gives investors the certainty they crave that Lilly’s future revenue won’t remain in its 2014 doldrums.