Business Concentrates POLLUTION REGULATION
▸ DowDuPont wins U.S. approval The U.S. Department of Justice has approved Dow Chemical’s merger with DuPont, marking the last major regulatory hurdle for the transaction, which is expected to be consummated in August. Like regulators in Europe, Brazil, and China, DOJ noted that the linkup as originally proposed would have been bad for competition in agricultural chemicals and packaging polymers. However, DOJ isn’t adding to the concessions already required by the European Commission. To satisfy the EC, DuPont is selling a large part of its crop protection business to FMC. Dow is selling its ethylene acrylic acid copolymers business to South Korea’s SK Global Chemical. Brazil and China asked for small local concessions in addition to the EC mandates.—ALEX TULLO
INORGANIC CHEMICALS
▸ Lanxess to trim chrome chemicals
Chemours to end GenX discharges Reacting to a barrage of criticism after the fluoropolymer processing aid GenX was found in the Cape Fear River, Chemours says it will now “capture, remove, and safely dispose” of wastewater containing the chemical at its Fayetteville, N.C., plant. North Carolina’s Department of EnviF F F CF3 ronmental Quality (DEQ) says Chemours’s action F3C OH •NH3 is a step in the right direction. The department O and the state’s Department of Health & Human F F O Services say they will continue to “investigate this GenX issue until we have answers to address the concerns of downstream water users.” Used to manufacture fluoropolymers, GenX is a six-carbon fluorinated compound that Chemours says has a “favorable” toxicological profile. However, DEQ points out that GenX is a relatively new chemical whose health effects are not fully understood. The processing aid replaced two eight-carbon molecules, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate, that persist in the environment and have been linked to human disease. In February, Chemours and former parent DuPont agreed to pay $670 million to settle lawsuits over PFOA-tainted drinking water.—MARC REISCH
the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy to test antifouling paints.—MICHAEL MCCOY
CATALYSIS
START-UPS
▸ SLIPS Technologies raises new funds SLIPS Technologies, a slippery-coatings start-up, has raised $8.6 million in new funding. The firm was founded in 2014 with technology from Joanna Aizenberg, a chemistry professor at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. Close to two-thirds of the funding is from Anzu Partners, BASF Venture Capital, entrepreneur Hansjörg Wyss, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. SLIPS got $3.0 million of the funding in a grant from
12
C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 26, 2017
▸ Topsoe sells emissions catalysts to Umicore Denmark’s Haldor Topsoe has agreed to sell its emissions catalyst business to Umicore, a Belgian precious metals and catalysts firm, for $135 million. The business’s 280 employees will transfer to Umicore along with technology, intellectual property, and production and R&D facilities in Brazil, China, Denmark, and the U.S. Topsoe says it will concentrate on refining and petrochemical catalysts. Umicore says the acquisition will bolster its emissions control catalyst portfolio.—ALEX SCOTT
POLYMERS
▸ CP Chem readies polyethylene plants Chevron Phillips Chemical has completed construction of two polyethylene plants that are part of its $6 billion petrochem-
New polyethylene plants at Chevron Phillips’s site in Old Ocean, Texas. ical investment on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The plants, in Old Ocean, Texas, are now undergoing system checks and commissioning. The other major element of CP Chem’s investment, an ethylene cracker in Baytown, Texas, is set to be completed in the fourth quarter.—MICHAEL MCCOY
BIOFUELS
▸ Corporate researchers make fat algae A research partnership between ExxonMobil and Synthetic Genomics reports using gene-editing techniques to double production of biofuel lipids in algae (Nat. Biotechnol. 2017, DOI: 10.1038/nbt.3865). First, researchers used CRISPR/Cas9 to find transcription factors that modulate the amount
CREDIT: CHEVRON PHILLIPS
Lanxess plans to improve the profitability of its chrome leather tanning chemicals business by closing its chromium salts plant in Zárate, Argentina, and concentrating production at sites in Newcastle and Merebank, South Africa, near chromium ore sources. Lanxess says the move will cost close to $70 million and affect 170 employees but save about $10 million annually. Lanxess calls itself the only company to supply both chromium tanning salts and organic leather-treating chemicals.—MICHAEL MCCOY
of carbon stored by the algae Nannochloropsis gaditana in fatty acids rather than in carbohydrates or proteins. They then used CRISPR/Cas9 and RNA interference to create
Researchers inspect algae with high oil content. mutations in the transcription factors, resulting in algae that make more oil without inhibited growth. ExxonMobil says the technology is still years from the market.—MELODY BOMGARDNER
BIOTECHNOLOGY
START-UPS
▸ JSR buys another life sciences firm
▸ Biotech firm Rubius raises $120 million
JSR has agreed to acquire Selexis, a Swiss firm with a mammalian cell-line generation technology said to improve yields of protein therapies such as bispecific antibodies, multimeric proteins, and Fc-fusion proteins. Low yields, weak protein expression, and poor analytical techniques are hampering the development of promising new treatments, JSR claims. Selexis will be integrated into KBI Biopharma, a biopharmaceutical contract manufacturer that JSR bought in 2015.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS
Rubius Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Mass.based developer of red-blood-cell-based therapies, has raised $120 million in a financing round that included its founding investor, Flagship Pioneering, as well as other investors. Rubius engineers red blood cells to express enzymes, agonists, antagonists, and other proteins. Launched in 2014, the company says its lead programs include enzyme replacement therapies and therapies targeting cancer. It expects to start human trials in 2018.—MICHAEL MCCOY
TREMBLAY
DRUG DEVELOPMENT
REGULATION
▸ Conditions placed on Evonik-Huber deal The European Commission has approved Evonik Industries’ $630 million purchase of J.M. Huber Corp.’s specialty silica operations, but with conditions. Evonik will have to divest precipitated silica used in dental applications. Huber will have to divest precipitated silica used as a defoamer as well as its hydrophobic precipitated silica business. The commission says the two must sell the businesses, and provide production technology and support, to a firm with an established presence in Europe. Both have agreed to the conditions.—
MARC REISCH
ONCOLOGY
▸ Merck KGaA spins off ▸ Start-up Repare uses immuno-oncology firm synthetic lethality Repare Therapeutics has launched with $68 million in financing to develop drugs that target genetically defined weaknesses in cancer. Repare was started by three academic scientists and nurtured for 18 months by Versant Ventures. In that time, the company used a CRISPR-enabled drug discovery concept, known as synthetic lethality, to identify several promising oncology targets and multiple preclinical molecules, Versant says. Another start-up, Tango Therapeutics, launched in March to exploit synthetic lethality.—MICHAEL MCCOY
Business Roundup
CREDIT: SYNTHETIC GENOMICS
▸ Trinseo, a styrenic polymers firm, is buying Applicazioni Plastiche Industriali, a thermoplastic elastomers specialist. API makes products such as thermoplastic polyurethane and ethylene vinyl acetate compounds at its plant in Mussolente, Italy. ▸ DuPont will spend $40 million to expand its ethylene cracker in Orange, Texas, by about 90,000 metric tons per year. The addition will be built by CB&I, which will install its short residence time pyrolysis heater technology.
Merck KGaA’s corporate venture arm has created a new company, iOnctura, based on two potential drugs from its health care R&D portfolio and three from Cancer Research Technology, the commercial arm of the nonprofit Cancer Research UK. Catherine Pickering, CEO and cofounder of iOnctura, says the firm’s goal is to modulate immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment to maximize the potential of checkpoint inhibitor drugs. The firm has access to supplies of avelumab, a checkpoint inhibitor being developed by Merck and Pfizer.—MICHAEL MCCOY
cility that makes the animal feed amino acid l-lysine by fermentation.
▸ Amyris will receive unspecified support from the government of Queensland, Australia, to build a 23,000-metricton-per-year farnesene plant there. The farnesene will be made from local sugarcane and sold in Asia for use in cosmetics, fragrances, nutraceuticals, and other products.
▸ Evotec and members of the facioscapulohumeral dystrophy community have made a $5.4 million investment in Facio Therapies, a Dutch firm developing small-molecule treatments for the muscle-wasting disease. Evotec conducts all of Facio’s discovery work.
▸ Veramaris, a joint venture of DSM and Evonik Industries, has picked a Cargill site in Blair, Neb., to build a plant making omega-3 fatty acids from algae. The Blair location already hosts an Evonik fa-
▸ CiVentiChem, a contract drug development firm, has received its first commercial active pharmaceutical ingredient approval from FDA. The firm also says it will open a new manufacturing suite
at its Cary, N.C., site next month. ▸ Kaneka will spend $15 million to buy Applied Poleramic, a California-based formulator of resins used in the aerospace industry. Kaneka, of Japan, says it wants to build a $200 million-per-year aerospace composites business. ▸ Heptares Therapeutics will relocate the 107 people it employs in Welwyn Garden City, England, to nearby Cambridge in the next 12–18 months. The biotech firm will occupy a building in Granta Park that Gilead Sciences is vacating.
JUNE 26, 2017 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
13
