State adds record number of life sciences jobs
Twenty companies committed this year to add more than 4,000 jobs.
Twenty companies committed this year to add more than 4,000 jobs.
The federal legislation is roundly criticized at a BioCrossroads meeting, but some firms have found a silver lining.
Indiana’s life sciences industry has weathered the recession relatively well, but Eli Lilly’s struggles and tight capital markets could threaten the future.
Venture funds nationwide crested at $100 billion in 2000, but that number last year had drooped to $18 billion.
Indiana firms have dismissed more than 1,400 life science workers over the last two years. Now BioCrossroads has launched a website that aims to keep that talent in the state.
Venture capitalists in Indiana and nationally have thrown money at the company with abandon. Local investors include CID Capital,
Clarian Health Ventures and the Indiana Future Fund.
Having invested in 10 companies since 2005 and with its $6 million pot of money running low, the Indiana Seed Fund is nearing
a crossroads.
Not-for-profit launched last year by BioCrossroads and Indiana’s orthopedic companies names Zimmer Inc. executive Brad Bishop
to lead the initiative.
AgeneBio Inc. this month landed a $300,000 investment from the Indiana Seed Fund to fund operations, bolster its intellectual
property, and begin learning how to make a drug into a once-a-day pill.
Bloomington led the nation as the No. 1 small city in medical devices and equipment.
Purdue University’s decision to close the Chao Center in West Lafayette is a setback for Indiana’s effort to grow
a vibrant contract drug manufacturing sector. But it’s just the latest in a series of unexpected changes—not all for
the worse—since Indianapolis-based BioCrossroads launched a contract drug manufacturing initiative in late 2007.
The firms continued to grow over the last year but face increasing challenges, according to a new report by Indianapolis-based
life sciences trade group BioCrossroads.
A report set to be released Wednesday by local life sciences industry group BioCrossroads says Indiana companies providing
contract pharmaceutical research and manufacturing services are weathering the economic downturn and are growing.
Jim Pearson knows a thing or two about raising money from venture capitalists. And he has some advice for BioCrossroads:
Teach entrepreneurs the value of money.
More than half of the venture capital fund’s original investors took a pass on its $58 million successor, the newly launched
INext.
The new INext fund is the successor to the $73 million Indiana Future Fund, which the life science initiative raised in 2003.
FAST Diagnostics LLC said initial human trials on its method to measure kidney function faster and more accurately than existing
techniques could begin as early as next year, with commercialization following by 2012.
A new task force is charged with making recommendations for development of the city’s downtown certified technology
park.
Thanks partly to a state grant and support from Indiana’s BioCrossroads life sciences initiative, principals “decided
locating here would give Aarden a better chance of success.
Long tracking the emergence of information technology firms involved in the health and life sciences sector, the state’s
IT trade group, TechPoint, is undergoing a mitosis of sorts to help fuel the trend. It has created Advancing
Life Science & Health Care Information Technology, or ALHIT, which will focus on growing this subset of the IT realm.