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ARKEMA AND CJ PICK METHIONINE SITE Arkema and CJ Cheil-Jedang have chosen a site in Kerteh, Malaysia, to build their previously announced complex for a biobased version of the feed additive methionine. First announced by the French and South Korean companies in April, the project is expected to cost $400 million, split equally, and to open by the end of 2013. At the facility, CJ will produce a methionine precursor by sugar fermentation. Arkema will produce methyl mercaptan. The two ingredients will then be reacted to produce l-methionine that is 80% bioderived, the firms claim.—MM
PPG RENEWS ZOO COMMITMENT
PPG
PPG will provide a grant of $6.9 million to the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium over the next 10 years. The grant renews a partnership that was initiPPG CEO Charles ated in 2001 and was set to expire in 2012. E. Bunch poses In addition, PPG has with zoo officials and a penguin. inaugurated the PPG
Conservation & Sustainability Fund aimed at funding projects with a multidisciplinary approach to conservation.—AHT
LINDE RECEIVES ENERGY DEPARTMENT GRANT The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded German industrial gas firm Linde $15 million for research into carbon capture technologies. Linde intends to build a pilot plant in Wilsonville, Ala., by 2014 where it will test new CO2-scrubbing methods. Linde says the plant will build on a similar project it has undertaken with BASF and energy utility RWE at RWE’s Nieder-
SUNOCO SALE COMPLETES EXIT FROM CHEMICALS Sunoco has agreed to sell its Haverhill, Ohio, phenol plant to Goradia Capital, a holding company affiliated with the petrochemical distribution firm Vinmar International. The $107 million sale includes a plant that makes phenol and acetone via the oxidation of cumene as well as a bisphenol A plant. The move completes Sunoco’s departure from the chemical business. Earlier this year, Sunoco agreed to sell a phenol and acetone plant in Philadelphia to Honeywell. Last year, the company sold its polypropylene business to Braskem. Sunoco acquired the Haverhill plant and a large portion of the polypropylene business through its $695 million purchase of Aristech Chemical in 2001. Sunoco is incurring a $169 million charge related to the write-down of the Haverhill plant.—AHT
aussem, Germany, power plant. The three firms have been developing new aminebased scrubbing solvents.—AHT
ASTRAZENECA, HEPTARES HUDDLE ON GPCR AstraZeneca and Heptares have launched a four-year collaboration focused on discovery and development of therapies targeting G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), a family of proteins in the human body associated with various diseases as well as the aberrant growth and survival of cancer cells. The partners will use Heptares’ GPCR discovery technologies, including StaR, which engineers stabilized receptors thereby allowing GPCRs to be investigated. These technologies will be used to vet the potential of large and small molecules in AstraZeneca’s research portfolio in the areas of central nervous system, pain, cardiovascular, metabolic, and inflammatory disorders. AstraZeneca will pay Heptares $6.25 million up front in addition to unspecified research funding and milestone payments.—RM
CHRYSLER, ZEACHEM TO COLLABORATE Biofuel firm ZeaChem has signed a memorandum of understanding with the automaker Chrysler to speed up the development of cellulosic ethanol as a transportation fuel. ZeaChem produces ethanol via a thermochemical and biochemical process using hybrid poplar trees as feedstock. The WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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two firms’ alliance aims to promote the credibility of cellulosic ethanol as a costeffective green fuel and to make it available to the consumer market. Chrysler says it is committed to promoting the use of alternative fuels and to manufacturing flex-fuel vehicles. According to ZeaChem, the partnership will help to “fast-track the large-scale production of cellulosic ethanol.”—MMB
MOMENTIVE ADDS PROPPANT CAPACITY Momentive Specialty Chemicals will expand capacity for resin-coated proppants, used in hydraulic fracturing in the oil and gas industry, at its Brady, Texas, facility. The facility provides convenient access to deliver the curable resin-coated proppants to two markets: the Eagle Ford shale formation in southern Texas and the Permian Basin oil field in western Texas. Proppants are small, generally spherical, grains of sand or ceramic materials that are pumped down wells to prop up tiny fissures in rock, allowing oil and gas to flow up the well. They can be coated with curable resins that prevent the grains from moving out of the fissure.—MMB
U.S. IMPOSES SANCTIONS ON BELARUSIAN FIRMS The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on four Belarusian firms owned by Belneftekhim Concern, which the U.S. Department of Treasury says is controlled by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko. The firms are fertilizer maker Grodno Azot,
nylon fiber maker Grodno Khimvolokno, refiner Naftan, and tire maker Belshina. With the moves, the U.S. assets of these firms are frozen and Americans are prohibited from commercial and financial dealings with them. The sanctions are a response to the incarceration of political prisoners and the crackdown on activists and journalists.—AHT
cepted the synthetic trachea because it was seeded with the patient’s own stem cells. The Hattiesburg, Miss.-based firm says the comAn artificial posite, developed by trachea made using the specialty University College polymers POSS London Medical and PCU. School professor Alexander M. Seifalian, could also be used to form human arteries, veins, heart valves, or tear ducts.—MM
AMPAC FINE CHEMICALS SIGNS BIODEFENSE DEAL Ampac Fine Chemicals (AFC)has finalized an agreement with Chimerix to advance commercial-scale manufacturing of the active ingredient in Chimerix’ CMX001. Working under a contract from the U.S. government’s Biomedical Advanced Research & Development Authority, Chimerix is developing the antiviral agent to prevent and treat smallpox infections. AFC will make the product in its recently completed semiworks unit, which can handle hazardous reactions under contained conditions, at its site in Rancho Cordova, Calif.—AMT
SWEDISH REGULATORS SEEK DRUG STANDARDS
POLYMER ENABLES SYNTHETIC TRACHEA A synthetic trachea based on a composite of POSS and PCU—polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane and poly(carbonate-urea) urethane—has been transplanted into a cancer patient. According to Hybrid Plastics, supplier of the POSS, the patient’s body ac-
BUSINESS ROUNDUP BASF is increasing capacity for copper and copperchrome catalysts through a round of capital investment. The base-metal catalysts are used mainly in petrochemical and oleochemical processing, the company says. DOW CHEMICAL is challenging architecture, design, and engineering students and professionals to come up with innovative designs for nearzero-energy multifamily dwellings. The challenge,
Sweden’s Medical Products Agency (MPA) is calling for stronger environmental standards for the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals that are sold in Europe. Its proposal would require changes to the European Union’s current Good Manufacturing Practice standards to control “environmental emissions of substances stemming from pharmaceutical manufacturing” that could pose a threat to health. Such legislation would have an impact on production outsourced to India and China, according to Charlotte Unger, environment director of MPA. The agency’s proposal was prompted in part by a study conducted by Gothenburg University that measured concentrations of medicinal products in wastewater from a purification plant used by about 90 drug manufacturing facilities near Hyderabad, India, in 2007.—RM
being hosted at www. designtozero.com, seeks projects incorporating active and passive solar technologies, among other construction-related energy-saving features. EVONIK INDUSTRIES has signed agreements on a previously proposed superabsorbent polymers plant to be built by late 2013 in Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia. The 80,000-metric-ton-per-year facility, a joint venture with Saudi Acrylic Acid Co., will get acrylic acid feedstock from an adjacent Dow Chemical joint venture.
ORICA’S fertilizer plant on Australia’s Kooragang Island released a “small amount” of sodium chromate, some of which descended on an adjacent neighborhood. The firm says the risk to residents is low and that it will clean up all affected properties. GE HEALTHCARE has agreed to acquire PAA Laboratories, a British developer and supplier of cell culture media for biomedical research and manufacturing. GE says the purchase will add “upstream” capabilities to its expertise in the
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ROCHE INVESTS IN CANADIAN SITE Roche will spend more than $190 million over the next five years on a pharmaceutical development center in Mississauga, Ontario, where its Canadian pharmaceuticals business headquarters is located. Renovations to the site are expected to begin later this summer, and the expansion is expected to eventually create some 200 jobs. Mississauga will become one of six development sites, which manage clinical-trial research operations, in Roche’s global network. Ontario’s Ministry of Economic Development & Trade will contribute $7.8 million to support the project.—LJ
CYTOS BIOTECH SLASHES STAFF, RESEARCH Cytos Biotechnology will reduce its workforce from 82 to about 10, and it is abandoning work on early-stage projects to focus its resources on CYT003-QbG10, a combination of a virus-like particle and synthetic DNA fragment that is in Phase II trials for allergies and asthma. Wolfgang Renner has resigned as CEO, and Thomas Hecht, current chairman of Cytos’ board, will take over executive chairman duties. Cytos is struggling to find a way to pay off a convertible bond of $52 million, due on Feb. 20, 2012. The Zurich-based company says it could still be short by $22 million come February.—LJ
“downstream” processes of biopharmaceutical manufacturing. AMYRIS, a biobased materials firm, has commissioned its third plant—and its first in the U.S.—for the production of farnesene, a chemical intermediate. The facility, owned by Tate & Lyle, is in Decatur, Ill. Amyris’ other production locations are in Brazil and Spain. PFIZER AND QIAGEN will collaborate to develop a companion diagnostic test for use with Pfizer’s dacomitinib, which is an
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oral EGFR, HER-2, and HER-4 inhibitor in Phase III trials to treat lung cancer. Qiagen will develop an assay to detect mutations of the KRAS gene, which tend to render EGFR inhibitors ineffective. The test will help to find the appropriate patients. HUMAN GENOME Sciences will use 4-Antibody’s retroviral B lymphocyte display technology to discover fully human therapeutic antibodies against targets chosen by HGS. The companies will collaborate on two projects.
