from its facility in Little Falls, Minn., earlier this month.—MELODY BOMGARDNER
OUTSOURCING
▸ Novasep to build viral vector facility The contract manufacturer Novasep will spend $29 million to build a viral vector facility in Seneffe, Belgium. The facility will house two suites equipped with single-use bioreactors ranging in size from 200 to 2,000 L. When completed in early 2019, the site will help meet growing demand for late-clinical-trial and commercial-scale production of viral-vector-based gene and immunotherapies, Novasep says. The company already has lab-scale production at a site in nearby Gosselies.—ANN THAYER
DRUG DISCOVERY
▸ Boehringer, Cornell target the lung Boehringer Ingelheim and Weill Cornell Medicine are joining to discover new approaches to treating chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The three-year collaboration is intended to combine Weill Cornell’s understanding of chronic airway diseases with Boehringer’s expertise in discovering therapies for respiratory disease. The two organizations earlier collaborated on inflammatory bowel disease.—MICHAEL MCCOY
PHARMACEUTICALS
▸ Merck & Co. hits Alzheimer’s setbacks In the latest blow to the hypothesis that amyloid plaques on the brain cause Alzheimer’s disease, Merck & Co. is ending a study of verubecestat after an early review of data showed the compound was not benefiting patients. Verubecestat prevents new amyloid-β plaques from forming by blocking the enzyme β-secretase. The Phase II/III
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study being halted tested verubecestat in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease, a population that could already have too much plaque for the drug to be useful. Merck will continue a Phase III study of the drug in people with a very early form of Alzheimer’s.—LISA JARVIS
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
▸ Thermo Fisher buys process systems maker Thermo Fisher Scientific plans to buy Finesse Solutions, a maker of process sen-
Business Roundup ▸ DuPont will sell the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Del., to the Buccini/Pollin Group real estate firm. Separately, DuPont says it plans to sell the DuPont Country Club on the outskirts of Wilmington.
rican firms—Unique Flavors and Unique Food Solutions— for $6.7 million. The Unique companies employ 64 people and have annual sales of sweet and savory flavors of about $9 million.
▸ Archroma will expand production of tetrasulfonated optical brightening agents, commonly used in papermaking, at its site in Prat del Llobregat, Spain. The new capacity is due to come on-line by mid-May.
▸ Novo will invest $95 million in the German contract research firm Evotec, resulting in ownership of about 8.9%. Novo, which manages assets for the Novo Nordisk Foundation, says it anticipates growth in external innovation and outsourcing in the drug industry.
▸ Frutarom Industries has agreed to buy two South Af-
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sors, controllers, and software for biopharmaceutical production with annual sales of $50 million. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. A key motivator behind the acquisition is Finesse’s development of a universal control system that “will combine seamlessly with our existing single-use technologies,” Thermo Fisher CEO Marc N. Casper says.—MARC REISCH
BUSINESS
▸ Ineos advances plans for off-road car Ineos, the European petrochemicals giant, plans to start producing an off-road vehicle to replace the defunct Land Rover Defender. After a sixmonth feasibility study, the firm says it will spend “many hundreds of millions” of dollars to introduce the vehicle, which it hopes to build in the U.K. “We want to Ratcliffe with one build the world’s of the Land Rover purest 4 x 4 and Defenders he wants are aiming it at to replace. explorers, farmers, and off-road enthusiasts across the globe,” says Jim Ratcliffe, Ineos’s chair and a 4 x 4 enthusiast.—ALEX SCOTT
▸ BASF will partner with the European Space Agency to evaluate uses of satellite data for agriculture. Real-time satellite information can help growers optimize fertilizer and water use and predict crop yields, BASF says.
tered a $10 million partnership with the engineering firm Christof Industries to expand production of protein and oil from soldier fly larvae. The two firms plan to build up to 25 fly farms a year to convert organic waste into feed products.
▸ Daiichi Sankyo will dissolve one of its Japanese research subsidiaries, Asubio Pharma, and absorb its 150 employees elsewhere in the company. Daiichi, which has been reorganizing its R&D operations, shut down an Indian R&D center in January.
▸ Akebia Therapeutics has licensed from Johnson & Johnson compounds targeting hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF), a regulator in red blood cell production. For $1 million, Akebia gains rights to a preclinical compound for inflammatory bowel disease and a library of other HIF pathway molecules. J&J gets an option to buy a stake in Akebia.
▸ AgriProtein, a South African animal feed start-up, has en-
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