Welcome to Indiana! BioCrossroads is excited to partner with MedCity News to spread the word about Indiana’s life sciences sector.BioCrossroads’ mission is to grow, advance and invest in Indiana’s life sciences sector. We have raised more than one-quarter billion dollars (in both grant funds and capital investments) for life sciences opportunities, organized four venture capital funds, and launched eight new enterprises that showcase some of our leading life sciences assets. Those enterprises include, for example, the Indiana Health Information Exchange to advance our pioneering work in health information technology, or OrthoWorx to capitalize on our dominance of nearly a third of the global orthopedics industry from the small and picturesque community of Warsaw, Indiana. Collaborating with industry, academia and government partners, we are busy writing a 21st-century chapter for our continuing story of more than a century of life sciences start-ups and strengths.

A young medical device company is leading the way in making certain brain and spine surgeries easier and less risky with its minimally invasive neurosurgery tool.NICO Corp. in Indianapolis, Indiana creates instruments for safe, minimally invasive tumor and cyst removal from the brain and spine. While even minimally invasive neurosurgery requires opening the skull or [...]

DePuy Orthopaedics launched several new surgical products this week for knee, shoulder and hip revisions.The Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary accounted for $5.8 billion in sales in 2011, but those sales were offset by $521 million in costs associated with the 2010 recall of its metal-on-metal ASR hip replacement system. That line of products had [...]

This post is sponsored by BioCrossroads.According to a report recently released by BioCrossroads, the medical devices industry is one of Indiana’s most valuable economic assets employing over 20,000 people, and generating more than $10 billion of annual economic output. The first of its kind report, From Hearts to Hips: Indiana’s Leadership in Medical Devices, was [...]

Even compared with other jobs in healthcare — an industry that made it through the heart of the recession rather gracefully — the job outlook for registered nurses is strong, with the number of jobs growing at an above-average rate.But nursing schools are slow to change, and in order to graduate successful nurses who are [...]

An Indiana neuroscience pharmaceutical company hopes it can gain entry into the market for Alzheimer’s disease treatment with experimental drugs it thinks could prevent the progression of the disease in the growing population of seniors.Based on the work of Dr. Michela Gallagher of John Hopkins University, AgeneBio of Indianapolis is working to slow the progression [...]

Eli Lilly is withdrawing Xigris from markets worldwide after a major study showed the drug doesn’t work for sepsis.I thought it would be a good time to rerun my post from earlier this year about conflict of interest problems with Xigris:An Archives of Internal Medicine article (Conflicts of Interest in Cardiovascular Clinical Practice Guidelines) [...]

A gastrointestinal stent from Cook Medical now has 510 (k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in patients suffering GI obstructions caused by cancer.Bloomington, Indiana-based Cook said that its Evolution Duodenal Controlled-Release Stent will be available for patients experiencing gastric outlet obstruction (GOO), a late-stage complication of GI-related cancers. Pancreatic cancer [...]

When the topic of the 2.3 percent medical device excise tax arises, Cook Medical‘s Scott Sewell is quick to frame the discussion around jobs.Of Bloomington, Indiana-based Cook’s roughly 10,000 employees, 6,000 work in the United States; 525 in the company’s endoscopy unit in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Sewell said that although the company has two new [...]

DePuy Orthopaedics has a new man in the corner office, now that it’s named veteran Andrew Ekdahl president of the Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary.Ekdahl will replace David Floyd, who resigned in March amid a damaging recall of one of DePuy’s hip replacement lines that’s already cost the company nearly $1 [...]