HEALTH CARE
Jonathan Bush steps down from athenahealth
Jonathan Bush, a brash business executive from a famous political family, stepped down on Wednesday from the helm of athenahealth amid an aggressive takeover bid from a New York hedge fund that wants to shake up the Watertown-based health care software company. Bush’s decision follows the sudden resurfacing in recent weeks of years-old allegations of improper behavior involving women, including his admission that he physically attacked his first wife before they divorced. His departure clears away an important impediment to the $7 billion buyout bid by Elliott Management: Bush’s reluctance to relinquish control over the company he’d built over two decades. In a statement, Bush said he had come to accept that “the very things that made me useful to the Company and cause in these past twenty-one years, are now exactly the things that are in the way.’’ The company, which has about 2,000 employees locally, makes Internet-enabled information technology tools for health practices and has cast itself as a disruptor in the sector. Athenahealth said Wednesday that it has initiated “a process to explore strategic alternatives,’’ including “a sale, merger, or other transaction . . . as well as continuing as an independent company.’’ Athenahealth is only the latest Boston company to be remade by Elliott and other activist hedge funds. Even athenahealth’s new executive chairman, Jeff Immelt, had his own clash with a hedge fund at his former company, General Electric, which is now in the midst of massive restructuring. — ANDY ROSEN
MEDICAL
BU and Johnson & Johnson to collaborate on lung cancer screening and treatment
Despite the remarkable progress that medicine has made treating some varieties of cancer, one common form remains nearly as deadly as it was four decades ago: lung cancer. The five-year survival rate is 17.8 percent today, according to medical experts, not much better than it was in 1977, when it was 13 percent. The disease is the leading cause of cancer death in men and women in the United States, killing about 154,000 people each year, more than those who die from breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer combined. On Wednesday, Boston University and the health care giant Johnson & Johnson announced a five-year collaboration that they hope will change that. The New Jersey company will fund a Johnson & Johnson Innovation Lung Cancer Center on the university’s medical campus. BU researchers will work closely with scientists from the company to develop biomarker-based early-screening tests for lung cancer, as well as medicines to arrest or eradicate the disease in its earliest stages. — JONATHAN SALTZMAN
MEDICAL
FDA approves marketing of Leukine to treat radiation poisoning
The Food and Drug Administration has lifted the final regulatory hurdle for Partner Therapeutics Inc., or PTx, to market Leukine as a treatment for radiation poisoning in adults and children, the company said on Wednesday. Partner Therapeutics, which was officially launched in January to find untapped uses for existing drugs, recently bought the global rights to Leukine, a decades-old cancer medicine, from Cambridge-based Sanofi Genzyme. The company is betting that demand will soar globally because of escalating fears of a nuclear attack. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in January moved the minute hand forward on the symbolic Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight — closer to the apocalypse than it has been since World War II, in large part because of saber-rattling by President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Leukine has been approved since 1991 in the United States to bolster immune systems weakened by chemotherapy in patients with acute myeloid leukemia. But recent laboratory tests found that rhesus monkeys were far more likely to survive high doses of radiation if injected with Leukine 48 hours after exposure. — JONATHAN SALTZMAN
RESTAURANTS
Bertucci’s gets a new owner
Bertucci’s has a new owner, but the rolls and pizzas will remain the same. After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April, the Northborough-based pizza chain was acquired by Earl Enterprises on Tuesday in a deal valued around $20 million. Earl Enterprises is based in Orlando and owns the Planet Hollywood, Buca di Beppo, and Earl of Sandwich brands. Robert Earl, the president and chief executive of Earl Enterprises, said he plans to keep the Bertucci’s operations, including its 4,000 employees, in Boston. “I’ve had a love affair with Boston that goes back a long way, back from building the Hard Rock Cafe on Clarendon Street, to the Earl of Sandwich on Boston Common,’’ he said. “I’m going to keep Bertucci’s Bostonian.’’ Earl said one of his first plans for the company is to reestablish its footprint in the city. Earl, who is on the board of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration, said that while he was in town last week to give a speech at the school’s commencement, he was already scouting out an additional two or three possible restaurant locations. And he plans to invest more in the buildings Bertucci’s owns. — JANELLE NANOS
EMPLOYMENT
AG cracks down on companies that ask job applicants about their criminal records
Attorney General Maura Healey has cited 21 employers for violating the state’s “ban the box’’ law, which prohibits businesses from asking about job candidates’ criminal backgrounds on employment applications. The investigation targeted more than 70 Cambridge and Boston businesses with paper application forms, part of an ongoing effort to educate employers about the 2010 law. The attorney general reached agreements with four large employers to come into compliance: Five Guys, Edible Arrangements, and L’Occitane were fined $5,000 apiece; the Walking Co., which recently filed for bankruptcy protection, agreed to comply with the law but was not fined. Healey’s office also sent warning letters to 17 businesses, informing them they must immediately remove questions about criminal records from their job applications: the Middle East Restaurant and Nightclub, Mainely Burgers, MexiCali Burrito Co., ArtScience: Culture Lab and Cafe, Meadhall, Love Culture, and Grafton Street Pub & Grill in Cambridge; and Brattle Book Shop, Kingston Grille and Bar, Salvatore’s, Sidebar, Stoddard’s Fine Food & Ale, the Chicken and Rice Guys, the Oceanaire Seafood Room, Tous Les Jours, Viga Italian Eatery & Caterer, and Frette in Boston. — KATIE JOHNSTON
PHILANTHROPY
Amazon gives $1m to Dorchester social service center
St. Mary’s Center in Dorchester just received its biggest donation ever, from one of the world’s biggest companies. Amazon said Monday that it will give the family homeless shelter and social service center $1 million, making good on a pledge last fall to match up to $1 million in donations. The combined $2 million will go toward a community resource center St. Mary’s hopes to build on its Jones Hill campus, offering legal help, domestic violence counseling, and other services for both St. Mary’s residents and the neighborhood at large. The $7 million project is likely to involve three to five years of fund-raising, planning, and construction. But the gift from Amazon — which also has a hiring and training program for mothers who live at St. Mary’s — gives it a strong jump start, Houtmeyers said. The e-commerce giant, which is expanding rapidly in Boston — the city is also a finalist for Amazon’s so-called second headquarters — has donated to providers of services for the homeless in other cities where it has a large presence, such as Washington, and is building a homeless shelter at its headquarters in Seattle. It also, however, opposed a recent plan to tax large employers in Seattle to raise money for services for the homeless. — TIM LOGAN
