Indianapolis Business Journal gathered leaders in Indiana’s life sciences industry for a Power Breakfast panel discussion April 24. Among other topics, the panelists discussed whether Obamacare helps or hurts companies in the industry, the biggest barrier to life sciences startups, and how rising activity among angel investors has changed the life sciences landscape.
Reviews of “The Realistic Joneses,” “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” “Les Miserables,” and “Violet.”
Assembly Pharmaceuticals, a company with roots in Bloomington and San Francisco, has attracted an undisclosed amount of investment from New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., Indianapolis-based Twilight Ventures, Zionsville-based Luson Bioventures, BioCrossroads Indiana Seed Fund II and private investors. Assembly is developing drugs that could cure chronic hepatitis B virus, or HBV, infection. Chronic HBV affects an estimated 350 million people worldwide, causing cirrhosis and liver failure and in some cases liver cancer. More than 600,000 deaths each year are attributable to HBV, which can be suppressed with lifelong therapy but which has no known cure. Assembly was formed in 2012 by Indiana University professor Adam Zlotnick and Dr. Uri Lopatin, who led HBV programs at Gilead Sciences and Roche Pharmaceuticals. Assembly has licensed intellectual property from the IU Research and Technology Corp. that was discovered in Zlotnick’s laboratory. Other co-founders of the company include IU chemistry professor Richard DiMarchi; Derek Small, president of Luson Bioventures; and William Turner, a former medicinal chemist at Lilly Research Laboratories.
Carmel-based nursing home developer Mainstreet Property Group LLC promised investors returns of 14 percent to 18 percent for investments in nursing homes it is now building around Indiana, according to a private document obtained by the Associated Press. Under its business model, Mainstreet arranges financing for its facilities, then leases the completed buildings to a private operator. The buildings are then sold to HealthLease Properties Inc., a real estate investment trust controlled by Zeke Turner, who is also CEO of Mainstreet. According to the document, Mainstreet was looking to raise $60 million to build 12 new nursing homes at a cost of $199 million combined. In the case of three nursing homes it planned, Mainstreet expected to sell each for roughly $20 million, collecting between $3.3 million and $5.3 million on each sale, which would represent profits of 16.5 percent to 26.5 percent. The document does not include expected sale prices for the other nine facilities. Some previous facilities appeared to have generated even larger profits. In the case of Wellbrooke of Westfield, a new health care facility Mainstreet completed last year, investors put in $750,000 and made a $4.5 million profit, according to the Associated Press. For eight nursing home sales to HealthLease detailed in the Mainstreet document, Mainstreet investors made $34 million on an investment of $14 million, for a $20 million profit.
Indiana University's trustees have selected a downtown Evansville site for a nearly $70 million health education and research center planned by IU's medical school and three other schools. The board of trustees approved the location Friday following a recommendation by IU President Michael McRobbie. The University of Evansville, the University of Southern Indiana and Ivy Tech Community College also plan to offer programs at the center that could draw some 2,000 health care students.
Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. has donated nearly $12.8 million to help defeat a ballot initiative that would give California regulators power to reject increases in health policy premiums, according to Bloomberg News, citing data provided by the California-based research organization MapLight. Premiums for family medical coverage in California have increased 185 percent since 2002, with average monthly premiums for single coverage at $572 in 2013, compared with $490 nationally, according to a report released in January by California HealthCare Foundation, an Oakland-based not-for-profit. The ballot initiative would require insurers to disclose publicly and justify proposed rate changes that affect individual and small employer customers. It would also give the state insurance commissioner authority to reject increases. About 35 states, including Indiana, have authority to approve or deny rate changes, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
Eli Lilly and Co. saw little effect on its stock price after a jury in a federal court in Louisiana ordered Lilly to pay $3 billion in damages to patients who took the diabetes medicine Actos. That decision had no practical impact on Lilly because the maker of Actos, Japan-based Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., had agreed to indemnify Lilly against any legal damages. Lilly sold Actos for Takeda in the United States from 1999 until 2006. The jury ordered Actos to pay $6 billion in damages after finding that the drug companies hid the cancer risks of Actos. Takeda and Lilly said they would appeal the judgment. Even without a successful appeal, legal experts told Bloomberg News the $9 billion in damages is likely to be reduced because it is out of proportion to the documented damages in the case.
Ohio-based ViaQuest Inc. has acquired the Indiana operations of TriStar Home Health and Hospice, a division of Louisville-based Trilogy Health Services. The acquisition includes seven home health care branches in Evansville, Fowler, Huntingburg, Lafayette and Muncie, and two in Terre Haute. The locations operate under one of three brand names: Vibrant Home Health Care, Care One Homecare Services and Serenity Hospice. The locations employ a total of 180 people. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
FAST BioMedical has been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a clinical trial of the diagnostic tool it is developing to measure plasma volume and kidney function in hospitalized patients. The grant, part of the federal Small Business Innovation Research program, adds to more than $16 million FAST has raised. The Indianapolis-based company said in January that it wants to raise as much as $25 million in the next two years to bring its product to market. “We believe that a quantitative measurement of a patient’s plasma and blood volume status and kidney function will have a demonstrable impact on outcomes in an area of medicine that has seen only modest advances in previous decades,” Dr. Bruce Molitoris, FAST’s medical director, said in a prepared statement. “Currently, physicians don’t have either a direct or timely way to assess these key parameters clinically.”
West Lafayette-based Endocyte Inc. could fetch a takeover bid at one of the industry’s highest premiums on record, according to Bloomberg News. Endocyte’s drug vintafolide has proved effective against both ovarian and lung cancers during clinical trials, raising the prospects for the company’s entire technology for developing targeted drugs for cancer and inflammatory diseases. Endocyte may command about $50 per share in a sale, up from its closing price of $21.96 on Friday, according to the average of four estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The estimates ranged from $35 per share to $65 per share. That would be the second-highest takeover premium on record among similar U.S. deals in the industry. According to a report by the Royal Bank of Canada, that could spark a takeover bid from Merck & Co. Inc., which has already paid for vintafolide’s late-stage development and will sell it as an ovarian cancer treatment in Europe. But Endocyte retains rights to the underlying technology and other drugs developed from it. AstraZeneca plc or Roche Holding AG also could be interested, according to a report from Cowen Group Inc. If vintafolide is approved for ovarian and lung cancer in the U.S. and Europe, it could bring in as much as $2 billion in revenue, according to Edward Tenthoff, a New York-based analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos. Endocyte is now developing another cancer drug that targets cells in the same way as vintafolide, though with a potentially more potent chemotherapy drug. “If you have other ones that might be better, that might be problematic for Merck,” said Robert Hazlett, a pharmaceutical analyst at Roth Capital Partners LLC. “It may need to seriously consider Endocyte.”
Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences LLC is likely to become a stand-alone public company in the next three years, according to some Wall Street analysts—if in a year or two Dow Agro’s profits are on course to double from current levels. Of course, the parent company of Dow Agro, Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co., could sell Indianapolis-based Dow Agro to another agricultural company, as it tried to do back in 2009. Analysts said Dow Chemical didn’t like the offers it received at the time, which was in the darkest days of the global recession. One reason for selling Dow Agro to another company is that its fast-growing seed business has yet to achieve the scale needed to support the massive R&D investments Dow has made in that area in recent years. Dow Agro’s $7 billion in annual revenue would rank it as the fifth-largest public company in Indiana, behind only WellPoint Inc., Eli Lilly and Co., Cummins Inc. and Steel Dynamics Inc. The company has annual cash flow of about $1 billion, and thinks a raft of new products can double those profits in five to seven years. Dow Agro employs about 1,800 people here, and its most recent hiring expansion touted annual wages from $65,000 to $95,000.
Now that Indiana-based Endocyte Inc.’s experimental cancer treatment is proving successful, the company may command a takeover bid at one of the industry’s highest premiums on record.
My biggest concern going wasn’t whether the rethought design would hold up to memories of the turntable-fueled original. It was whether I would hear the people sing…in the audience.
A growing number of tech workers are seeking refuge in Indianapolis from skyrocketing living expenses in other cities, including technology hubs on the coasts.
Former Eli Lilly and Co. Nick LeRoy will lead the state board, which reviews, approves and regulates some of the state’s charter schools.
Richard DiMarchi is being honored for his work on Eli Lilly and Co.'s Humalog, which has been used by millions around the world to address the complications of diabetes.
While life sciences companies don’t rack up huge jobs numbers, their relatively high pay means that every job they create is worth two in the rest of the private sector.
Technology and work habits are prompting firms to squish space allotted to workers.
Fritz French and Richard DiMarchi have raised $1.7 million from venture capitalists to launch Calibrium LLC, a biotech company that will develop diabetes drugs. French and DiMarchi were leaders of Marcadia Biotech Inc., which developed diabetes drugs based on DiMarchi's research as a chemistry professor at Indiana University. They sold the company for $287 million to Switzerland-based Roche in late 2010. In November, Calibrium struck a deal with Indiana University to fund 10 researchers in DiMarchi’s chemistry lab in Bloomington. Then in December, Calibrium secured convertible debt investments from two of the venture capital firms that backed Marcadia—San Francisco-based 5AM Ventures and Seattle-based Frazier Healthcare. Calibrium has hired Kristin Sherman as its chief financial officer; she held the same position at Marcadia. French said he expects more members of the Marcadia team to join Calibrium as its work advances.
Nearly two-thirds of the state’s nursing homes are now participating in partnerships with county-owned hospitals that effectively double their profit margins. The partnerships allow both hospitals and nursing homes to draw down extra federal money, which appears to give nursing homes at least 2 percent on top of their average profit margin of 2 percent. According to data from the Indiana State Department of Health, 329 nursing homes have sold their licenses to county-owned hospitals—63 percent of all nursing homes in the state and nearly 70 percent of those that offer beds to Medicaid patients. The partnerships with county-owned hospitals trigger larger payments from the federal agency that oversees the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Those payments average $71.54 per day for each Medicaid patient, according to analysis of Indiana data by the accounting firm Myers and Stauffer LC. It is unclear exactly how the hositals and nursing homes split that money, which totaled $313 million statewide last year. But Indiana Health Care Association officials said hospitals are paying nursing homes management fees that net out to about 2 percent of the nursing homes’ net patient revenue.
Hall Render Killian Heath & Lyman, the nation's largest health-care-focused law firm, ranked eighth on The Hill newspaper's 2013 top 10 list of Washington, D.C., lobbying firms based on the number of new client registrations. Last year, Indianapolis-based Hall Render registered 28 new clients. The firm created its federal legislative and regulatory advisory practice in 2012. The practice includes attorneys John Williams and John Render, as well as Andrew Coats, the son of Indiana Sen. Dan Coats.
Fritz French and Richard DiMarchi, the former leaders of Marcadia Biotech, have teamed up to launch the diabetes drug development firm Calibrium LLC.
Reinforced coffee-table legs might be required if you are giving these impressive Indiana-focused books
Eli Lilly and Co., Pfizer Inc., Sanofi and other large drugmakers will keep paying doctors to give talks about their products, leaving GlaxoSmithKline Plc alone for now in its decision to halt such compensation.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it has invalidated renewable fuel credits sold by an Indiana company for biofuel it didn’t produce. The filing Wednesday follows fraud charges filed against the former owners of the Middletown-based E-Biofuels LLC in September.
Since 1998, there have been more than 100 attempts to develop an Alzheimer’s treatment, and all have failed. Such a product may generate as much as $5 billion annually for Merck, according to analysts
Indianapolis’ and Carmel’s work forces were so lacking in high-tech jobs in 2001 that the void led to breakneck-speed hiring over the past 12 years as the cities caught up—faster than almost any other place in the United States.
Head-trauma lawsuits by ex-football players filed against the NCAA defy easy consolidation—unlike National Football League cases consolidated by federal judges and later settled for $765 million.
