Restaurants and stores plan new Indy locations
Off Broadway Shoes highlights new retailers entering the market.
Off Broadway Shoes highlights new retailers entering the market.
Polymer Technology Systems said in 2007 that it would make a $3 million investment at its operation on Zionsville Road and create 110 jobs.
Our latest retail and restaurant roundup features a new warehouse shoe store called Off Broadway Shoes and two new pizza joints, Happy’s and BoomBozz.
Roche Diagnostics Corp. is ramping up cargo shipments between the U.S. and Europe, securing a third weekly Cargolux flight at Indianapolis International Airport to ship its medical products overseas. The flight, which began Jan. 15, is the first scheduled Cargolux flight to depart Indianapolis and fly nonstop to Europe–opening up new export capabilities from central Indiana. Currently, Cargolux Airlines International operates two inbound flights from Luxembourg to Indianapolis, each Wednesday and Friday. Boeing 747 freighters typically take on Roche’s chemical reagents and medical devices and then stop in Chicago or other cities before heading back to Europe. The outbound Boeing 747 will have room for additional cargo, which Roche hopes to grow into, but it also could be used by other companies shipping products to Europe. Roche, based in Switzerland, operates its North American headquarters out of Indianapolis.
AIT Laboratories, one of the area’s fastest-growing companies in recent years, is now eliminating jobs. The Indianapolis-based forensics and clinical testing company won’t say how many, but officials admit its business got pinched in 2011 and now it is trying to restructure. “AIT has seen reimbursement from government and private payers reduced throughout 2011, which has had a negative financial impact on the company,” CEO Michael Evans said in a prepared statement. The job cuts are a turnabout from 2010, when AIT said it planned to create as many as 160 positions by 2014 and invest $74 million to equip a 90,000-square-foot building at Woodland Corporate Park as a new headquarters and lab. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered AIT up to $1.8 million in performance-based tax credits to help with the expansion. AIT had boasted as many as 500 employees recently. Some pharmacy industry websites have been buzzing with talk about “massive” job cuts at AIT, with claims of as many as 100 furloughs. AIT officials would not confirm or deny those numbers.
A California-based pharmaceutical company says it expects to hire 234 people by 2016 at a new operation on the site of a former Pfizer Inc. drug plant on the south side of Terre Haute. NantWorks LLC plans to invest $85.5 million to redevelop the facility. The manufacturing plant, which is expected to be operational in 2015, will produce cancer drugs and injectable medicines for use in critical care settings. Pfizer employed more than 800 workers at the site before closing in 2008. NantWorks officials say scientists, chemists and engineers employed by the plant will earn an average annual salary of about $51,000.
Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings Inc. acquired Synvasive Technology Inc., which makes Stablecut surgical saw blades and a soft tissue balancing system for knees. Zimmer did not disclose the price it paid for Synvasive, a privately held company based in Reno, Nev. Zimmer has annual sales of more than $4 billion and sells its orthopedic implants in more than 25 countries.
A new report by BioCrossroads says 53 percent of the 20,000 jobs in Indiana’s medical-device sector require no more than a high school education.
International flights for Roche Diagnostics from Indianapolis International Airport expand city’s export capacity, bolster airport’s cargo ambitions.
New York-based Epstein Becker Green already has clients here, including Biomet and Roche Diagnostics.
Government OKs cargo flights to Guadalajara industrial hub.
Samy Meroueh, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, will receive $720,000 over a four-year period from the American Cancer Society to fund his cancer research. Meroueh’s research focuses on uPAR, a cell surface receptor that exists only in cancer cells that metastasize, making it an excellent target for the development of drugs. Metastasis, or the spreading of cancer from one organ to another, is the main reason that more than 90 percent of patients succumb to cancer, according to Meroueh. With earlier funding from the National Institutes of Health, Meroueh’s lab in Indianapolis has identified small molecules that attach to uPAR on the surface of cancer cells in metastatic tumors. He is now concentrating his research on two experimental compounds to examine their ability to block metastasis of breast cancer in mice. Meroueh hopes to later link his compounds to existing chemotherapy agents to deliver them directly to cancer cells, while sparing healthy cells.
Eli Lilly and Co. has joined a race to launch a new class of drugs to lower heart disease risk. An experimental drug under development by Lilly doubled levels of good cholesterol in a Phase 2 clinical trial, according to Bloomberg News. Good cholesterol, or HDL, sweeps the bad form of the fatty substance, called LDL, out of arteries, helping to reduce clogs. Lilly’s drug, called evacetrapib, boosted HDL as much as 129 percent and lowered bad cholesterol as much as 36 percent, the Indianapolis-based drugmaker reported on Nov. 15. Two other companies—New Jersey-based Merck & Co. Inc. and Switzerland-based Roche Holdings AG, have already moved similar drugs to the third and final phase of human trials, according to Bloomberg. Both drugs are predicted to be blockbusters with more than $5 billion in annual sales if they are approved. All three rivals aim to avoid the toxicity seen with a previous good cholesterol drug from New York-based Pfizer Inc. that was abandoned in 2006 after it triggered deaths in a study.
The St. Vincent Heart Center of Indiana was named one of 50 cardiovascular hospitals in the country by market research firm Thomson Reuters. According to the firm, 97 percent of all heart inpatients at U.S. hospitals survive their procedures and 96 percent remain complication free. Still, the top 50 hospitals have even better results, including 23 percent fewer deaths for bypass surgery patients, a 40-percent lower rate of heart failure complications, fewer readmissions, shorter hospital stays and costs that were lower by $4,200 per patient. Thomson Reuters based its analysis on data from the 2009 and 2010 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review, which includes nearly all senior patients. The St. Vincent Heart Center was the only Indianapolis hospital named to the list this year.
U.S. initial public offerings are set to raise the most in six months in November as Delphi Automotive Plc and Angie’s List Inc. take advantage of the biggest rebound in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in 20 years.
Eli Lilly and Co.’s experimental drug doubled levels of good cholesterol in a study, setting up a race with Merck & Co. and Roche Holding AG to develop a new class of medicines to lower heart risk.
Endocyte employs 12 people in Indianapolis and plans to add three or four more commercial executives there over the next year and a half as it anticipates approval of its ovarian cancer medication in Europe.
WellPoint is among 11 insurers ordered to refund money to almost 600,000 New Yorkers who were charged too much for health insurance.
Anderson-based Bright Automotive said production of its Idea work van could start in 2013 or 2014 at AM General's Mishawaka factory. Up to 300 workers ultimately could be hired.
The northern Indiana factory where AM General once made H2 Hummers could be building plug-in, hybrid cargo vans under a deal with Anderson-based Bright Automotive announced Friday.
RND Group fills development gaps for companies.
Owner Chris Wirthwein insists the Carmel firm with growing billings serves Indiana companies within a two-hour drive.
Sherry Keramidas, who earned her doctorate in neuroscience and physiological psychology from Purdue University, is executive director of the Maryland-based Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society, which is holding its annual conference Oct. 22-26 at the Indiana Convention Center.