Lilly’s Alimta fails to extend survival in lung cancer study
Eli Lilly and Co. said Thursday that its cancer drug Alimta didn’t extend overall survival when combined with Roche Holding AG’s Avastin in patients with a form of lung tumor.
Eli Lilly and Co. said Thursday that its cancer drug Alimta didn’t extend overall survival when combined with Roche Holding AG’s Avastin in patients with a form of lung tumor.
After Eli Lilly and Co. found a “glimmer of hope” in its test of its experimental Alzheimer’s drug, doctors and stock analysts generally concluded the company needs to conduct another long clinical trial to prove the drug’s effect. But one stock analyst thinks Lilly already has what it needs to ask for approval for its drug.
While investors supported the sliver of promise offered when Eli Lilly and Co. said its Alzheimer’s drug may slow progression early in the disease, doctors weren’t as impressed, saying it could take years to find out for sure.
U.S. corn farmers, who've been hurt by the worst drought in a generation, are likely to harvest smaller crops than the government forecast this month, based an analysis of dry spells in the past 42 years.
Odds are long that Eli Lilly and Co.’s leading Alzheimer’s drug will show positive results when its Phase 3 trial results are released within a few weeks, but even the smallest improvement in the cognitive impairment of test patients would be a home run for Lilly.
The Stratford retirement community has hired Margaret Clark as health care administrator. She will oversee the community’s assisted-living, memory-care and skilled-nursing neighborhoods, which it calls The Retreat. Clark most recently served as administrator at Hickory Creek at Rochester, a nursing home in Rochester, Ind.
Dr. Kevin Helms, an internist, has been hired by The Stratford retirement community as its medical director. He is part of Indianapolis-based Advanced Healthcare Associates, a group of health care providers that serves nursing home patients. Helms did his medical training at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Lynn Driver, CEO of the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization, will retire at the end of September. Driver has led the organization since its founding in 1987, and overseen its growth to 115 employees in three locations around Indiana. She will be replaced by Kellie Hanner, who is currently the organization's chief operating officer.
Student Development Co. helps college students run Textbook Painting businesses, to learn the ins and outs of entrepreneurship. Thirty students in seven states are participating this summer, including 10 student entrepreneurs in Indiana.
Roche Holding AG racked up nearly $1.4 billion from North American sales of its diagnostic products, the Swiss drug and device firm reported Thursday.
Life sciences leaders discuss topics ranging from accomplishments to initial public offerings and the nature of innovation at the July 25 event.
Hoosier employers added jobs faster than those in all U.S. states except two through the end of May, according to federal estimates.
We often hear that government should be run more like business.
Roche Diagnostics Corp. plans to spend $300 million on an expansion of its Indianapolis headquarters, creating 100 jobs by 2017, the company said Wednesday.
A New York socialite has raised more than half of the $7 million a court ordered her to repay after she pleaded guilty to duping an Indiana company and other corporations out of millions of dollars.
Elanco, the fast-growing animal health division of Eli Lilly and Co., wants to add 200 jobs at its headquarters in Greenfield, but says it needs taxpayer assistance to do it, according to the Greenfield Daily Reporter. Elanco asked the Greenfield City Council for a 10-year tax abatement on a $14 million expansion, which would add two buildings to the corporate campus Elanco opened in 2010. Elanco employs 475 workers there now, paying average slaries of $80,000. Elanco projects it would hire the 200 additional administrative employees—who would oversee the company’s marketing, manufacturing, finance and other operations—by the first half of 2015. The new jobs would pay on average $60,000 apiece. Elanco has been growing rapidly through both increased sales of its products for livestock and pets, as well as through acquisitions. Elanco’s revenue last year grew 21 percent to nearly $1.7 billion.
Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare revamped its myHealthcare Cost Estimator tool for its customers in Indianapolis and 46 other markets, and now provides cost estimates based on the health insurer's actual contracted rates with physicians, hospitals, clinics and other health care providers. The cost estimator tool covers more than 100 common treatments and procedures, factoring in a UnitedHealthcare member’s specific benefits plan. It also allows health plan members to compare cost and quality information between different hospitals and physicians. And the tool even points out alternative treatment options that a patient might consider. “myHealthcare Cost Estimator meets a longstanding consumer need for thorough but simple online comparison shopping for health care by putting relevant information right at people’s fingertips,” UnitedHealthcare's Yasmine Winkler, chief product and marketing officer, said in a prepared statement. Many health insurers are rolling out tools to help consumers gauge cost and quality before making decisions on health care. This year, Indianapolis-based Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield expanded to more than 100 the procedures its cost-comparison tool covers. Anthem also rolled out a program in which employers can give its workers a cash payment each time they use the cost comparison tool before seeking care.
Indiana medical device companies enjoyed at least a symbolic victory last week when the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to repeal the 2.3 percent medical device tax that was part of the 2010 health reform law. The tax, estimated to raise $29 billion over the next decade, is scheduled to take effect next year. Indiana has more than 300 medical device manufacturers, employing almost 20,000 people, including Zimmer Holdings Inc., Biomet Inc., Cook Group, DePuy Orthopaedics Inc., Hill-Rom Inc. and Roche Diagnostics Corp. The repeal is not likely to even come up for a vote in the Senate, and if it does, will almost certainly be defeated by the Democrat-controlled chamber. Also, a repeal of the tax likely faces a veto from President Obama. However, the repeal vote is a sign of Republicans’ attempts to scale back the health care law that passed without a single Republican vote. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on the law’s constitutionality.
Republicans in the U.S. House joined with 37 Democrats to pass a bill repealing a medical-device tax, chipping away at the 2010 health-care law in a victory for companies including Indiana-based Zimmer Holdings Inc. and Boston Scientific Corp.
Following setbacks, industry leaders prepare to launch innovation center downstate
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.
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.
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.