A Purdue University-based company has reached a deal giving Chinese and Danish firms access to a patented product that makes
it easier to turn wood chips, grasses and other agricultural wastes into ethanol.
Indiana University is showing signs that it’s finally serious about translating research into commercial product, through
grants it is awarding via its $10 million Innovate Indiana Fund and by developing a computing technology mini-campus.
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 upstart developer of a device to help doctors choose the right-sized stent to prop open clog-prone arteries has brought
aboard former Guidant Corp. executives, including Bill McConnell. Their regulatory and marketing expertise could help FlowCo Inc. bring its artery-measurement
product to market as soon as 2011.
Monday’s decision throws out a $65.2 million patent-infringement verdict won by Ariad for royalties on Lilly’s osteoporosis
drug Evista and sepsis medicine Xigris.
Indianapolis-based Vortek Surgical LLC will relocate to Brownsburg, expanding its headquarters, manufacturing and distribution
operations and creating more than 60 jobs in the next three years.
The uncertainty of health care reform and a bad economy curtailed venture capital flow in 2009. That trend hit Indianapolis,
but the rest of the state actually saw an increase.
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.
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.
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.
Indianapolis-based FAST Diagnostics, a developer of a method to quickly measure kidney function, announced today that it has
received $1 million in federal funding.
For a city feverishly growing its technology and life sciences sectors, it seemed a bit anticlimactic last January when
Purdue University dedicated its new technology center with only one tenant. But the lone tenant in the $12.8
million complex, FlamencoNets, a high-tech telecommunications firm, is about to get some company.
More emerging life science companies have found life in the form of federal
Small Business Innovation Research grants.
Economists call it a “virtuous cycle” when successful entrepreneurs plow their gains into new businesses. Jim Pearson calls
it another day on the job. The former Suros Surgical Systems Inc. CEO is attempting to repeat what he already has done: Build
a company to bring a promising medical device all the way from the drawing board to the market.
BioCrossroads is exploring an unusual new strategy to boost the development of Indiana’s life sciences industry: Team up with
San Diego. Advocates say it’s a novel approach with enormous potential for Indiana.
Labs are nearing capacity at Strand Analytical Laboratories, which provides forensic and paternity DNA testing. In the second year of Scott Newman’s business, the former prosecutor predicts 2007 revenue will reach $4 million.
