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It’s been another busy year in Indiana health care and life sciences, with headlines nearly every week announcing another billion-dollar deal or investment.
Your faithful scribe has spent 2024 researching and writing dozens of health care-related stories. It was tough to pick the top 10, but here are my choices.
(By the way, this is my last such roundup. I am retiring at the end of this week after 40 years in the news business. Please reach out to my successor, Daniel Lee, at dlee@ibj.com, with news tips and story ideas.)
Now, in no particular order, onto the top 10 stories of the year:
1. Lilly to invest another $4.5B in Lebanon site for new ‘medicine foundry’
Eli Lilly and Co. said in October it will invest an additional $4.5 billion at its manufacturing site at the LEAP Research and Innovation District in Boone County to create a center for advanced manufacturing and drug development.
Lilly said the expansion is expected to add 400 full-time jobs for highly skilled workers, including engineers, scientists, operations personnel and lab technicians.
The new funding will bring the Indianapolis-based drugmaker’s total investment in the Lebanon site to $13.5 billion, making the development one of the largest capital projects in Indiana history. It’s also the fourth investment in the site announced by Lilly in the past 2-1/2 years.
The new center, called the Lilly Medicine Foundry, will be designed to give the pharmaceutical maker the ability to research new ways of producing medicines, while also scaling up manufacturing of medicines for clinical trials.
2. Indiana aims to keep closer eye on health care mergers, acquisitions
Who is buying or selling hospitals, medical and dental offices, surgical centers, rehabilitative care clinics and other health care operations around Indiana?
Until now, many of the deals have been secret, but soon, Indiana officials will find out.
Starting in July 2024, any health care entity or private equity firm that is planning a merger or acquisition in Indiana—where the assets of at least one of the parties is $10 million or more—must notify the state attorney general at least 90 days in advance.
The Attorney General’s Office will review the deal and can issue an opinion about whether it has any antitrust concerns. It can also demand more information through the courts.
The move is part of a larger effort by some lawmakers and patient advocacy groups to drive down the cost of health care in Indiana. They say increasing consolidation over the last few decades has pushed up the cost of medical care, with hospital systems and private equity firms buying hundreds of medical practices and related health care services around the state, often increasing prices along the way.
3. Community Health plans to build $335M hospital in Westfield
Community Health Network said in June it plans to build a $335 million hospital in Westfield with a six-story, 100-bed patient tower.
The project will mark the Indianapolis-based health care system’s first hospital in Hamilton County, the most prosperous and fastest-growing county in Indiana, where all other major hospital systems in central Indiana have set up full-service and specialty hospitals in recent years.
The project, near 196th Street and U.S. 31, will feature a mix of new construction and renovations, on the site of a former business park. It will include an emergency department, medical offices and an ambulatory surgical center. Altogether, the facility will span 425,000 square feet.
4. Marian University unveils $150M campaign for health sciences, plans to expand med school enrollment
Marian University announced a $150 million campaign in September to raise funds for its health sciences programs—an effort aimed at increasing enrollment from 162 to 185 students per class in its College of Osteopathic Medicine.
The private Catholic university on the city’s west side said it also plans to launch degree programs in occupational therapy, physical therapy and other rehabilitative health care services, and expand undergraduate and graduate nursing programs, with additional locations.
“With the projected need for physicians, nurses, occupational and physical therapists, and other health care roles over the next 25 years, now is the time for bold action,” Marian President Daniel J. Elsener said.
The College of Osteopathic Medicine, which opened in 2013, last year celebrated more than 1,000 graduates, with 79 percent of the physicians entering primary care, emergency medicine, psychiatry and general surgery, “directly addressing critical physician shortages in underserved areas.”
5. Carmel startup MBX Biosciences, latest company by DiMarchi and Hawryluk, goes public
MBX Biosciences Inc., a five-year-old Carmel-based startup, went public in September, and saw its shares jump nearly 48% in its debut on the Nasdaq.
The company is developing treatments for endocrine and metabolic disorders, such as hypoparathyroidism, post-bariatric hypoglycemia and obesity. Its positive reception on Wall Street was seen as an extension of the general enthusiasm for obesity treatments.
The company’s IPO price was $16, and shares rose to a high of $27.50 on Nov. 6. The stock has since fallen to about $18 a share as of trading Monday mid-afternoon.
The decision by MBX officials to go public came just weeks after the company announced it had landed another $63.5 million in Series C financing, bringing its total fundraising to $213 million.
MBX was founded in 2019 by Indiana University chemistry researcher and serial entrepreneur Richard DiMarchi and his longtime partner, Kent Hawryluk, the company president and CEO.
DiMarchi, the company’s scientific co-founder, is no longer on the board of directors, but serves as an external adviser through a continuing research agreement between the company and his IU-Bloomington laboratory.
DiMarchi and Hawryluk worked together on two previous Indiana startups, Marcadia Biotech and MB2, which developed technology for metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.
Marcardia was later bought by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche. Denmark-based Novo Nordisk later bought MB2.
5. IU Health rolls out Indy Health District as construction continues
Work on Indiana University Health’s $4.3 billion downtown hospital campus, one of the most expensive construction projects in Indiana history, is set to be finished in late 2027.
Officials say the hospital, with three 16-story patient towers, should receive its top beam—or be “topped out”—next spring.
The new campus will consolidate Methodist and University Hospitals, which sit about 1-1/2 miles apart. The eight-block expansion will extend IU Health’s footprint south to West 12th Street and from Capitol Avenue to Interstate 65, from its current site at Capitol Avenue and West 16th Street.
The complex will include a medical office building, a support building, a utility plant and retail space. It also will be home to the Indiana University School of Medicine’s education and research building.
IU Health plans to demolish most of Methodist Hospital but has not given details about what it plans to do with that land.
And if that weren’t a big enough project, in October, IU Health rolled out an ambitious program called the Indy Health District that aims to improve the health of people in five historic neighborhoods near the new hospital where residents score low in lifespan and high in chronic diseases such as diabetes and kidney disease.
IU Health said it is joining forces with other anchor institutions on the northern edge of downtown—including The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, Ivy Tech Community College and Citizens Energy Group—to try to uplift the social and health measures of the new health district.
6. IU lands $138M grant from Lilly Endowment to fund new biosciences accelerator
Indiana University has landed a $138 million grant from the Lilly Endowment that will fund construction of a state-of-the-art facility to drive advancements and commercialization in biosciences and develop talent in the sector.
IU announced the gift in December, calling it the largest grant it has ever received in support of research and development. The grant from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment is to the IU Foundation.
The money will help establish what the university is naming the IU Launch Accelerator for Biosciences, known as the IU LAB, which will be based at the 16 Tech Innovation District.
The IU LAB will be housed in a six-floor, 150,000-square-foot facility that is expected to open in 2027 and will serve as IU’s permanent home in the 16 Tech Innovation District.
7. INCOG BioPharma investing additional $125M on Fishers campus
INCOG BioPharma Services, a Fishers-based company that produces sterile injectable drugs, announced in July it is investing an additional $125 million to expand operations, including the construction of a second 100,000-square-foot building on its campus.
The four-year-old company makes pre-filled syringes and cartridges for outside customers, including large drugmakers needing additional manufacturing capacity and young biotechs that typically outsource all their manufacturing.
The expansion will add 100 jobs to the campus, on top of the about 140 today—and further growth is likely, Cory Lewis, founder and CEO, told IBJ.
“We’re looking to get to 250 to 350 within the next couple of years,” he said.
The privately-owned company plans to break ground in August on the new building, which will be used for packaging and warehousing.
9. Elanco reaches agreement with activist investor, avoiding messy proxy fight
Elanco Animal Health Inc. said in April it had reached an agreement with an activist investment firm that has been calling for a shakeup of the board and the dismissal of CEO Jeffrey Simmons.
The Greenfield-based maker of animal vaccines, antibiotics and other health products said that as part of the agreement with Ancora Holding Inc., it will appoint two new independent directors supported by the investment firm to its board.
The move will expand Elanco’s board to 14 members allowed the company to avoid a messy proxy fight last spring over the future of the company and its leadership.
Ancora owned about 3% of Elanco’s outstanding shares, and in recent months has been strongly pushing for an overhaul of the company. But in a statement on Monday, Ancora CEO and Chairman Frederick DiSanto, “Our recent interactions with Elanco give us confidence that Jeff and the board are focused on the right steps with respect to corporate governance and value creation.”
Simmons has said the company is on a growth path with blockbuster drugs about to hit the market.
10. Lilly CEO predicts obesity-treatment Zepbound will become drugmaker’s top drug by 2025
For a drug that has been on the market for only a year, Eli Lilly and Co.’s anti-obesity treatment Zepbound has quickly made a huge name for itself, racking up more than $3 billion in sales and prompting the company to spend billions of dollars on new factories to keep up with demand.
But it’s only the beginning of the story, David Ricks, CEO of the Indianapolis-based drugmaker, told a lunch audience in early December at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
By next year, he said, Zepbound could prove itself the 148-year-old company’s most popular drug ever.
“People have a scale in their bathroom,” he said. “They step on it every day. They love losing weight.”
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