NEWS OF THE WEEK BUSINESS
INFORMEX INFORMS CHEMICAL INDUSTRY Custom chemicals makers shrug off economic woes at big trade show
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GNORING A DOWNTURN IN THE
custom chemicals industry several companies attending the Informex custom chemicals trade show in New Orleans last week announced new projects and initiatives. Biotechnology and chiral chemistry for pharmaceutical chemicals production were common themes. The biggest investment news came from Avecia, which announced plans to build a $100 million facility in Billingham, England, to produce microbially derived biologies. The first stage of the project is due to open in 2003, adding 10,000 Lof capacity for therapeutic proteins. Another 30,000 L will be added by 2005, making the plant the largest purpose-built unit of its kind in the world, Avecia says. Biotechnology firm Maxygen chose Informex to announce the establishment of a wholly owned chemicals subsidiary, Codexis, which supplies biocatalytic processes for making chiral pharmaceutical intermediates and active ingredients. The move is a first step toward complete independence for the subsidiary, Maxygen executives said. Alan Shaw, president of Codexis, vowed to expand the company's offerings beyond gene evolution technology to actual products, including biocatalyst libraries and, eventually, pharmaceutical ingredients made through a manufacturing alliance with a firm in India. A Codexis rival, Diversa, launched its own library of nitrilase enzymes for the manufacture ofchiral pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. MarkJ. Burk, Diversa's vice president of chemical prodHTTP://PUBS.ACS.ORG/CEN
uct development, said the hundreds of enzymes in the line will enable reactions for which no known organic or inorganic catalyst is now available. The news at Informex wasn't all about biotechnology however. In the field ofchiral catalysis, Avecia announced the formation of a relationship with Synetix Chiral Technologies to develop new immobilized catalysts for transfer hydrogenation and cyanohydrin chemistry Nick Hyde, vice president of Avecia Pharmaceuticals, said continued investment in unique technology is one of the reasons Avecia enjoyed 4 0 % growth in sales X-RAY
of fine chemicals last year in a market that was disappointing for many firms. Regis Technologies, a midsized pharmaceutical chemical firm in Morton Grove, 111., announced plans to triple capacity through construction of a facility on land just purchased adjacent to its existing plant. Six production suites will be added by 2 0 03, according to Dave McCleary, director of business development. In the field ofphosgene chemistry, Sigma-Aldrich Fine Chemicals said it is boosting phosgenation capabilities to the 2,000-gal scale in Sheboygan, Wis. SNPE, meanwhile, said some operations at its Toulouse, France, plant—forced to shut down last year in the wake of an explosion at a neighboring facility—would restart by the end of March, but that phosgene-based processes would be idle until the end of the year. SNPE is supplying customers from other plants. —MICHAEL MCCOY
Shaw
Hyde
CRYSTALLOGRAPHY
Pumping Iron, Bacteria-style ike the airlock in a spaceship, transporter proteins in the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria close behind precious iron cations before allowing them to move through the protein into the inner reaches of the cell. That's the picture that emerges from new crystal structures of one type of iron-transporter, known as FecA. Postdoc Andrew D. Ferguson and professor Johann Deisenhofer of Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the department of biochemistry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and colleagues have determined the structure of the FecA transporter alone and with its iron substrate bound to it [Science, 295,1715 (2002)]. P O R T OF E N T R Y View down the pore (blue) of FecA Earlier structural studies with a different iron transtransporter shows chelated porter protein showed that, when iron binds to the iron complex (red arrow) transporter, it sends a signal through the membrane to bound to central protein that recruit an energy-delivering molecule called TonB to the plugs the pore. Once binding transporter. Energy from TonB is needed to fuel the occurs, protein loops (red) movement of the iron into the cell against a concentrabend over outer pore opening tion gradient. to seal it before plug allows But that structure didn't show how the transporter iron to move farther into cell. keeps the iron from leaking back out of the pore. "If no precautions are taken, iron from inside the cell could get back outside again," Deisenhofer explains. "Something has to be done to prevent this, and our structure shows what happens."—REBECCA RAWLS
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