HEADLINES OF THE YEAR Contributors: Melody Bomgardner, Ryan Cross, Britt Erickson, Emma Hiolski, Cheryl Hogue, Lisa Jarvis, Jyllian Kemsley, Rick Mullin, Dorea Reeser, Marc Reisch, Alex Scott, Jean-François Tremblay, Alex Tullo, Linda Wang, and Andrea Widener, plus Glenn Hess, Jeff Johnson, and K. V. Venkatasubramanian, special to C&EN.
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POLICY
Chemists were among the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets during the March for Science on April 22 in Washington, D.C. (shown), and hundreds of other cities across the U.S. and world. Organizers promoted the march as a nonpartisan event in support of science, but some scientists chose not to participate because they saw it as too political.
CR E DI T: CH E RY L H O GU E /C& E N
C&EN highlights the biggest chemistry stories of 2017
CHEMICAL REGULATION
WOMEN IN SCIENCE
Tug-of-war emerged over chemical safety rules
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mplementing Obama Administration chemical safety rules in the Trump era is proving contentious. The U.S. EPA welcomed Nancy Beck as deputy assistant administrator of its chemical safety and pollution prevention office in May, just weeks before rules for prioritizing and evaluating the risks of chemicals were due to be finalized under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which was amended in 2016. Environmental groups later claimed that Beck ordered a last-minute rewrite of the rules, which were proposed under the Obama Administration, in such a way that they reflect the chemical industry’s wish list. Before joining EPA, Beck served for five years as senior director of regulatory affairs at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the chemical industry’s main trade association. EPA’s chemical safety office
is currently without an assistant administrator, so Beck has been calling the shots. President Donald J. Trump nominated Michael Dourson, a toxicologist with decades of experience in chemical risk assessment, for the position in July. But Dourson withdrew his nomination on Dec. 13 amid growing concerns about his close ties to the chemical industry and history of pushing for less-protective chemical safety standards. He had been serving as an adviser to EPA and is now expected to leave the agency. Meanwhile, environmental groups are campaigning to stop Beck from handling three other rules proposed by the Obama Administration. The rules would ban certain uses of trichloroethylene, methylene chloride, and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone because of human health risks. ACC is pushing to delay the bans.
“I’m thinking,
‘What do I do? Do I shove him? Do I do anything? He’s got my proposal.’ ” —An academic chemist on her experience being sexually harassed at a conference The persistent problem of sexual harassment in chemistry and in the broader community was on public display in 2017. C&EN and the ACS Women Chemists Committee will cohost a daylong symposium on sexual harassment in science at the March 2018 ACS meeting in New Orleans to discuss how to prevent harassment in the workplace and at meetings.
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
EVOLUTION OF DOWDUPONT Responding in part to demands of major shareholders, Dow and DuPont modified the structures of the agricultural chemical, specialty products, and materials science firms slated to be spun off from the newly formed DowDuPont. The most significant changes involve moving businesses from the materials science to the specialty products company and are meant to better cultivate synergies among existing businesses when the splits happen in 2019, the companies say. To satisfy regulatory concerns about the merger, DuPont also sold Business that a large part of originated from its agricultural =█ operations to FMC in return for FMC’s =█ nutrition and health business. =█ +
Breakup plan as of Dec. 2015
Breakup plan as of Sept. 2017
Agriculture $16 billion Seeds and crop protection chemicals.
Agriculture $14 billion (Original agriculture minus operations divested to FMC.) Deal with FMC In exchange, To get antitrust FMC gave up approval, DuPont food and sold much of its crop protection chemicals pharmaceutical ingredients. business to FMC.
Specialty products $12 billion Electronic materials; food ingredients; probiotics; enzymes; aramid fibers; building materials; and industrial biosciences.
Materials science $46 billion Petrochemicals; packaging plastics; engineering polymers; elastomers; silicones; coatings resins; polyurethanes; construction chemicals; cellulosics; ion-exchange resins and reverse osmosis membranes; automotive adhesives and fluids; and specialty chemicals.
Specialty products $21 billion (Original specialty products plus the units moving from materials science and the units purchased from FMC.) Moved to cultivate synergy Engineering polymers; silicones for electronics and lubricants; automotive adhesives and fluids; ion-exchange resins and reverse osmosis membranes; microbial control chemicals; cellulosic food and pharmaceutical ingredients; and insulation board. Materials science $40 billion (Original materials science minus units moving to specialty products.)
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YEAR IN CHEMISTRY HEADLINES
COMPUTATIONAL CHEMISTRY
Major chemical companies including Dow Chemical, BASF and Evonik, are partnering with computer firms such as IBM and Hewlett Packard Enterprise on digitalization projects in materials science research. Programs launched this year aim to put artificial intelligence and machinelearning algorithms to work on large stores of research data using supercomputers.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Trump Administration works to reverse U.S. course on climate action Feb. 17 The Senate confirms Scott Pruitt as head of EPA. Pruitt doubts that humans are causing climate change and supports the oil and gas industry.
April 28 EPA begins removing pages mentioning climate change from its website, replacing them with information on energy sources.
June 1 Trump announces that he will begin the process to withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Agreement, a landmark climate deal that calls for all countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The price of drugs continued to inspire outrage from patients and lawmakers in 2017. Marathon Pharmaceuticals was forced to pause the launch of Emflaza, a steroid that was approved in February for people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, after outcry over its $89,000 annual price tag. Marathon subsequently sold the drug to PTC Therapeutics, which lowered the annual price to a still-critiqued $35,000. O
O March 28 President Donald J. Trump orders the government to reexamine or kill a slew of federal actions to curb greenhouse gas emissions, with the goal of lowering U.S. energy prices.
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May 23 Trump proposes to kill federal climate change research in his budget plan for fiscal 2018.
C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | DECEMBER 11/18, 2017
Nov. 29 The use of the term “climate change” drops in grant titles and summaries written by recipients of National Science Foundation funding, according to an analysis by National Public Radio. This appears to be in response to the Trump Administration’s antagonistic views on the subject.
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C R E D I T: S H UT T E RSTO CK ( CO MP U TE R ) ; U.S . E N V I RO N ME N TA L P ROT ECT I O N AG E N CY (P RU I T T ); A P ( T RUMP ) ; P O R E E AU D R E Y/A BACA / NEWS CO M ( E I F FE L TOWE R )
CLIMATE CHANGE
PUBLISHING
CHEMISTRY PREPRINT SERVERS TOOK OFF
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Total number of papers posted on ChemRxiv.
83,211
PHARMACEUTICAL CHEMICALS
Deaths from opioid overdoses have skyrocketed in the U.S. since 2013, largely because of the influx of illicit fentanyl. Drug dealers and traffickers are lacing their products with the synthetic opioid, which is 30 to 50 times as potent as heroin, and people may unknowingly take a fatal dose. The chemistry community is responding to the opioid crisis with tamperresistant pills, rapid analysis of street drugs, and novel nonopioid analgesics.
Total views and downloads of papers posted on ChemRxiv. O ACS launched the chemistry preprint server ChemRxiv in August with input from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the German Chemical Society, and other nonprofits and scientific publishers. Elsevier launched a competing chemistry preprint server, ChemRN, that same month. Note: Numbers as of Nov. 30. Source: American Chemical Society
BIOTECHNOLOGY
C R E D I T: O HS U
CRISPR advanced amid patent fight
CRISPR continued to captivate life sciences researchers this year. Uses of the gene-editing technique spread while scientists honed their methods and developed new tools that take advantage of the DNA cut-andpaste abilities first discovered in bacteria. Human health researchers used CRISPR in their quest for therapies to battle genetic diseases, cancer, and even bad gut bacteria. In agriculture, plant breeders used it to discover ways to enhance desirable plant traits, like starch quality in corn or taste and nutrition in vegetables. One academic group claimed to use CRISPR to fix a genetic mutation in human embryos for the first time in the U.S., although a follow-up report cast doubt on whether the editing occurred as claimed. To commercialize those discoveries, researchers’ companies or institutions have to obtain licenses from at least one—but likely more—of the groups that discovered CRISPR and own patents on it. But the CRISPR patent landscape grew increasingly complicated. A legal battle over foundational CRISPR/Cas9 patents embroiled the University of California, Berkeley, and Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard. In February, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office ruled in Broad’s favor, but UC Berkeley appealed
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the ruling. Later, UC Berkeley won patents in Europe and China. Additionally, some firms, such as MilliporeSigma, unexpectedly won extensive CRISPR patents, while start-ups opted to license CRISPR from groups besides UC Berkeley and Broad. Also this year, new variants of CRISPR, plus versions improved through engineering, provided alternatives to the classic CRISPR/Cas9 and its legally uncertain future.
In August, researchers led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov at Oregon Health & Science University reported that they used CRISPR to repair an introduced genetic mutation that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in a human embryo, resulting in two healthy copies of the gene. After the injection with the CRISPR/Cas9 system, the embryos progressed from zygotes (from left) to blastocysts.
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YEAR IN CHEMISTRY HEADLINES
NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD U.K.
“We must now ensure Brexit does not disrupt the safe supply of vital medicines to tens of millions of families in the EU 27 and the U.K.” —Steve Bates, CEO, BioIndustry Association, a U.K. trade group
U.S. Hurricanes pummeled the Gulf Coast and Caribbean islands. Massive flooding in the Houston area from Harvey shuttered dozens of refineries and chemical facilities located in low-lying areas and caused flammable organic peroxides at Arkema’s site in Crosby, Texas, to ignite. A few weeks later, Hurricane Maria devastated utilities in-
frastructure and damaged universities and pharmaceutical production facilities in Puerto Rico.
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Bates spoke on Nov. 20, shortly after the European Commission decided to relocate the European Medicines Agency, the European equivalent of FDA, from London to Amsterdam. The U.K. has yet to finalize how it will approve drugs after it leaves the EU in March 2019.
BRAZIL Although Brazil’s economy seemed to turn from recession to recovery, the government nevertheless cut its Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations & Communications budget by 44% in 2017 and plans further cuts in 2018. Scientists and their supporters took to the streets several times to protest.
EUROPE A potential $20 billion merger of Clariant and Huntsman led by Clariant CEO Hariolf Kottmann (left) and Huntsman CEO Peter Huntsman was torn apart by activist investor White Tale Holdings, a 20% shareholder of Clariant. White Tale calculated that the deal undervalued the Swiss firm and was a “complete reversal of the company’s long-standing strategy to become a pure-play specialty chemicals company.” Meanwhile, AkzoNobel ducked and dived and, despite shareholder grumbling, escaped from being acquired by its U.S. rival, PPG Industries. Instead of rolling over, AkzoNobel rolled out a plan to exit its chemicals business and become a stand-alone paint maker. But AkzoNobel’s bullish growth projections have yet to materialize.
MIDDLE EAST The Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East, the first such user facility in the region, transmitted light for the first time through one of its three beamlines on Nov. 22. The $90 million project will primarily serve scientists from Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey.
RUSSIA Russia destroyed the last of the chemical weapons stockpile, including artillery projectiles filled with the VX nerve agent, that it inherited from the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Globally, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says that 96% of declared stockpiles have been eliminated by its 192 member nations.
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CHINA After air pollution reached record levels in Beijing early this year, Chinese authorities closed, temporarily or permanently, hundreds—if not thousands—of chemical plants throughout the country. Meanwhile, thousands of chemical plants operating near residential areas are being told to relocate to industrial parks outside cities. INDIA India’s largest and premier R&D organization, the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), declared a fiscal emergency in June. Implementing a commission’s recommendations for higher pay and other benefits chewed up most of CSIR’s $630 million budget, leaving it with merely $31.3 million to pay for instruments, supplies, utilities, travel, and maintenance.
AFRICA The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) announced a partnership with F1000 to create an open access research platform, AAS Open Research, to launch in 2018. AAS hopes that the platform will benefit the scientific community, especially early career researchers such as student members of the ACS Nigeria International Chemical Sciences Chapter (shown).
CR E DI T: AP (H ARV E Y ); CO U RT ESY O F N ÉSTO R CA R BA L L E I RA (M A R I A); CO U RT ESY O F T H E BRA Z I LI A N SO CI E T Y FO R T H E A DVAN CE M E N T O F S CI E N C E (P ROT EST ); CL AR I AN T (H AN DSH AK E ); SESA ME (B U I L DI N G ); DA M I R SAGO L J / R E U T E RS / N EWS CO M (SM O G ); CSI R N AT I O N A L CH E M I CAL L AB O RATO RY ARCH I V E (L A B ); ACS N I G E R I A I N T E R N AT I ON A L CH E M I CA L S CI E N CES CH A PT E R (ST U DE N TS )
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YEAR IN CHEMISTRY HEADLINES FINANCE DIVERSITY
Broad-based demand moved company sales and stock prices in 2017. Change from 2016a Stock Sales price BASF 13.3% 2.4% DowDuPont 11.9 16.1 Eastman Chemical 5.4 16.1 Evonik Industries 13.9 5.9 Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings 11.5 41.2 a Data reflect results from Jan. 2, 2017, to Sept. 29, 2017, except for DowDuPont’s stock price, which reflects change in the combined results from Jan. 2 to Aug. 31. Source: Companies
The global chemical industry enjoyed a subtle but profitable shift in economic conditions this year, with chemical firms reporting broad-based demand that increased both the quantity of chemical products sold and the prices companies could charge. The year was not without disruption, however. Tropical Storm Harvey brought destructive wind and flooding to dozens of chemical facilities near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, leading to temporary shutdowns in September. But those shutdowns did not seriously hurt company results. Sales grew as consumer spending on personal care and nutrition products remained robust in all global regions, construction rebounded in Europe, and automotive manufacturing took off in Asia.
INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
Trump lost, won on plant safety
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he Trump Administration sought to weaken safety measures for the U.S. chemical industry in 2017, with mixed results. In March, the Administration recommended defunding the Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board
The Chemical Safety Board is currently investigating this 2016 release of chlorine from an MGPI Processing plant in Kansas. (CSB), a small, independent agency that investigates industrial chemical accidents. But Congress has shown support for the agency and, as of C&EN deadline, planned to provide it $11 million for 2018. That amount would match past funding for CSB. Even this funding level, however, is inadequate, according to
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an oversight office. In a July report, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General noted that CSB’s funding has been flat for 15 years, hindering the purchase of needed equipment and the training and hiring of staff. The report added that the economic impact of a single accident would be far greater than the agency’s budget. Nevertheless, the Administration is expected to try to kill CSB again in 2019. The Administration also set its sights on overturning an update of a 27-year-old safety regulation. In this case, it succeeded. The update was triggered by a 2013 Texas accident that killed 15 people, mostly firefighters, when a warehouse containing ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded. After a three-year review, EPA finalized a regulation to strengthen risk-management-plan provisions in the 1990 Clean Air Act. The regulation, released in the last weeks of the Obama Administration, would have toughened provisions for companies that handle hazardous materials, requiring them to develop better plans to avoid or mitigate accidents. However, in March, EPA sought another review and put the regulation on hold until February 2019.
“I don’t know what I would be doing now if it weren’t for DACA. Being in the U.S. with DACA has really been a life-changing event for me. It’s allowed me to do research and pursue a degree in STEM.” —Rudy, an undocumented student, University of California, Davis Immigration was front and center in the U.S. in 2017, starting with President Donald J. Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order barring travel to the country by residents of seven Muslim-majority countries. The move upended the lives of many foreign chemists. Later in the year, the immigration focus turned to the 2012 Obama Administration immigration policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which gave undocumented students an opportunity to step out of the shadows and apply for temporary work permits. In September, Trump ended the program. More than 1 million unauthorized young adults were eligible for DACA in 2016. What will happen to them remains to be seen.
C R E D I T: CH E MI CA L SA F E TY BOA R D
CHEMICAL INDUSTRY RETURNED TO GROWTH
ACS NEWS
National Chemistry Week, ACS’s largest chemistry outreach program, celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. ACS pastpresident George Pimentel started the program in 1987 as National Chemistry Day to educate the public about the role of chemistry in everyday life. Today, ACS continues to spread the seeds of chemistry around the world through new outreach programs such as its international Chemistry Festivals. Next year, ACS will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Project SEED program, which provides research opportunities for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. C&EN will honor the milestone with a series of monthly profiles featuring program alumni.
PESTICIDES
In one of his first moves For the first time, U.S. After more than a year as U.S. EPA administrator, farmers were able to plant of debate, officials in the Scott Pruitt delayed until at least 2022 an Obama Administration proposal to ban the organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos on food crops. Environmental activists, farmworkers, pediatricians, and others are urging EPA to follow through with the ban now, citing neurodevelopmental risks to children. S Cl C R E D I T: ACS
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soybeans developed by Monsanto that are tolerant to the herbicide dicamba. Farmers could use dicamba to kill weeds that had developed resistance to glyphosate, also known as Roundup. But growers reported more than 2,700 cases of injury to nontolerant soybeans from dicamba drift. The U.S. EPA and some states have placed new restrictions on the use of the herbicide for the 2018 growing season.
European Union voted in late November to allow the use of the top-selling herbicide glyphosate for another five years in the EU. Pesticide manufacturers and farm groups had pushed for a 15-year renewal, but controversy over the chemical’s listing as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency led to the shorter renewal period. O
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