INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
ucts using single-use bioreactors.—ANN
▸ France fines Total for fatal explosion
THAYER
OUTSOURCING
A French court has found Total responsible for causing the death of two of its employees and injuring a further six from a 2009 explosion at its ethylene cracker in Carling, France. The firm was fined $225,000. A former Total manager was fined $22,000 and handed a one-year suspended sentence. The court rejected Total’s defense of human error and found that the explosion could have been prevented if flame detectors had been working. Total closed the facility in October 2015.—ALEX SCOTT
BIOLOGICS
▸ Lonza to make Bluebird Bio drugs
quisition of Allergan’s generic drugs business. The combined annual U.S. sales of the branded versions of the drugs involved are about $3.5 billion, the firms say.—RICK
MULLIN
▸ Two pharma service companies revamp The contract research firm BioDuro has relaunched following its merger with Formex. Based in San Diego and operating mostly in China, BioDuro was acquired by PPD in 2009 but then reacquired by its founders last year. Following the merger with Formex, BioDuro now offers end-to-end drug discovery and development services, says CEO Cyrus K. Mirsaidi. Meanwhile, Frontage Laboratories has acquired two U.S. solid-dose drug plants from Sun Pharma. Frontage says the facilities will be the basis of a new contract development and manufacturing service called Frontida Biopharm.—MICHAEL MCCOY
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
▸ Aegerion, QLT merge to form Novelion Beleaguered Aegerion Pharmaceuticals will merge with a subsidiary of QLT to form a rare disease-focused company named Novelion Therapeutics. A group of inves-
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F Lonza has agreed to manufacture future commercial supplies of two lentiviral-based gene therapies for Bluebird Bio, a developer of drugs for genetic diseases and T cell-based immunotherapies for cancer. The two companies already have a multiyear relationship for clinical-scale materials. Now Lonza will build a dedicated production suite at its facility near Houston. The 9,300 m2 site, set to be completed in 2017, is designed to produce viral vectors and virally-modified cell therapy prod-
PHARMACEUTICALS
▸ Dr. Reddy’s picks up Teva portfolio The Indian generic drugmaker Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories has agreed to acquire eight Abbreviated New Drug Applications from Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries for $350 million. Teva is divesting the products as a precondition to closing on its ac-
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with sustainably sourced materials, the partners say.
▸ Johnson Matthey has acquired MIOX, a maker of on-site bleach generators for water treatment use. Matthey says MIOX complements its expertise in advanced materials, precious metals coatings, and electrode development.
▸ Technip has acquired BP Chemicals’ Hummingbird ethanol-to-ethylene technology. Using a proprietary catalyst and operating under mild conditions, the process is lower cost and simpler than first-generation technologies, Technip says.
▸ Clariant has dropped its November 2015 agreement to acquire the European anti-icing business of Kilfrost. The firm blames “commercial reasons and challenges in obtaining regulatory approval in the U.K.” Clariant did acquire Kilfrost businesses in North America and Asia.
▸ Takasago International, a Japanese flavor and fragrance maker, has launched a new fragrance created with technology from the industrial biotech firm Amyris. Debuted at the World Perfumery Conference, the fragrance is made
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Lomitapide
tors will sink roughly $22 million into QLT, bringing Novelion’s total cash to more than $100 million. Novelion’s portfolio will include two approved drugs—Aegerion’s Juxtapid, a treatment for a rare form of high cholesterol, and the leptin analogue Myalept—and QLT’s drug for rare eye diseases, which is on the cusp of Phase III studies. In February, Aegerion laid off 25% of its workforce after the arrival of competitors to Juxtapid.—LISA JARVIS
Business Roundup ▸ Ashland and the Brazilian chemical maker Oxiteno have formed a partnership to serve the agrochemical market in South America and Asia. The companies say they will supply their complementary portfolios of surfactants and polymers to agrochemical formulators.
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▸ Siluria will collaborate with Air Liquide on the development of new catalytic processes. Siluria says the effort will derive from its technology for making ethylene via the oxidative coupling of methane but focus on novel products.
▸ WuXi AppTec, the world’s largest contract research organization, has licensed Elsevier’s Reaxys and Reaxys Medicinal Chemistry data search platform. Under the five-year agreement, some 3,500 WuXi chemists will have access to Reaxys for searching data from more than 16,000 periodicals. ▸ Mitsubishi Gas Chemical and Nippon Kayaku have formed a joint venture to produce monoclonal antibodies at a MGC site in Niigata, Japan. Noting that Japan imports about $5 billion worth of biologic drugs annually, the companies say their venture will focus on biosimilars for the Japanese market.
JUNE 20, 2016 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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