Innovation, influence and business in America's medical cities.

Botox maker Allergan agreed Wednesday to pay $600 million to settle charges it illegally promoted and sold the beauty-enhancing drug through 2005 for unapproved uses like treating headaches, according to the New York Times.

Compendia Bioscience Inc. in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has won a $1.3 million Small Business Innovation Research Fast Track award to create a way for scientists to survey micro-RNA data across databases.

The average American hospital barely breaks even, according to Forbes’ first survey of America’s most profitable hospitals. But the most profitable hospital in the country — 235-bed Flowers Medical Center in Dothan, Alabama — recorded a 53 percent operating margin and belongs to the for-profit Community Health Systems (NYSE: CYH) chain in Brentwood, Tennessee.

BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. has received orphan drug status for an investigational enzyme replacement therapy to treat Pompe disease that was developed by ZyStor Therapeutics in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Just two weeks ago, BioMarin bought ZyStor for $22 million in cash.

Pittsburgh’s ClearCount Medical Solutions has closed its Series B funding round with the hoped-for $5 million to drive market penetration and R&D for its systems that use radio-frequency identification technology to detect and count sponges used in operations.

The National Institutes of Health Monday ordered all of its researchers conducting research on human embryonic stem cells to halt their experiments.

Stephen Hemsley, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, topped Modern Healthcare’s list of highest-paid executives at $106 million — $7.5 million in salary and benefits and $98.5 million in stock options in 2009. Hemsley is not alone, says an editorial in St. Louis Today. The CEOs at insurance giants Cigna, Humana, Aetna, Coventry Health Systems and WellPoint all took home between $10 million and about $18 million.

Medtronic Inc. is quietly working on plans to develop a pacemaker that can deliver electricity to the heart without wires. The company in Fridley, Minnesota, confirmed to MedCity News that it’s building a lead-less pacemaker but offered no further details on the device.

Two University of Michigan MBA graduates have formed Resonant Venture Partners in Ann Arbor to invest in seed-stage IT, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, alternative energy and defense companies in their state.

The share of U.S. hospitals that adopted electronic health records rose modestly between 2008 and 2009, but only 2 percent of the hospitals had records that would meet the federal government’s “meaningful use” criteria.