START-UPS
Ultragenyx will get an exclusive license to develop a preclinical candidate from Takeda for a specific genetic disease. Under a five-year collaboration, Ultragenyx will have the option to license up to five more Takeda compounds.—ANN THAYER
▸ Ixaltis gets funds to repurpose drug Ixaltis, a start-up company focused on urogenital disorders, has raised $9 million in its first funding round. The French firm’s pipeline consists of three NH compounds licensed from Sanofi. The most O advanced is litoxetine, a serotonin reuptake Litoxetine inhibitor and 5-HT3 receptor antagonist that Sanofi had studied as an antidepressant. Ixaltis will soon begin testing the compound in a Phase II trial for treating urinary incontinence. The company also received a $3.2 million loan under an academic-industrial research project dedicated to urogenital diseases.—ANN THAYER
DRUG DISCOVERY
▸ Takeda puts money in rare disease firm Takeda Pharmaceutical is investing $15 million in cash and purchasing $25 million worth of stock in Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical. Within 12 months, the Japanese company will have the option to purchase $25 million more of the rare disease firm’s stock.
START-UPS
▸ New York City gets biotech incubator
DRUG DEVELOPMENT Alexandria Real Estate Equities is building what it calls a first-of-its-kind biotech incubator in New York City. Alexandria LaunchLabs will open in 2017 with more than 1,400 m2 of lab and office space at the Alexandria Center for Life Science on Manhattan’s East Side. At the same time, Alexandria is forming a seed capital fund that will make up to $25 million available to companies that emerge from New York City’s academic labs. Tenants of LaunchLabs will have priority access to funds.—MICHAEL MCCOY
INVESTMENT
▸ Merck expands its venture fund Merck KGaA has doubled the size of its existing corporate venture fund and ex-
Business Roundup ▸ Italmatch Chemicals, an Italian chemical maker, has acquired Compass Chemical, a Smyrna, Ga.-based maker of organophosphonates and other chemicals for water treatment and oil and gas applications, from the private equity firm One Rock Capital Partners. The deal follows Italmatch’s purchase earlier this year of a similar Solvay business and its 2013 buy of phosphonates assets from Thermphos International. ▸ Stepan will expand its polyester polyol plant in Brzeg Dolny, Poland, by adding a new reactor. The company says it has also relocated its European R&D and
panded it beyond the biopharmaceutical area, to cover all three of the company’s businesses. Now worth up to $340 million, Merck Ventures will have teams dedicated to investing in the health care, life sciences, and performance materials areas as well as in entirely new businesses. The teams can participate in seed-stage company startup, early-stage syndicated investments, and Merck spin-off creation and funding.—ANN THAYER
technical service center to new laboratories in Wrocław, Poland. ▸ BASF has postponed a final investment decision for its proposed methane-to-propylene plant in Freeport, Texas, because of volatile raw material prices. The company says it will continue to keep an eye on market conditions in case it wants to resuscitate the project. ▸ Cargill has received a socalled no-objection letter from FDA, allowing it to market a new form of stevia sweetener as “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS. The company worked with
▸ Microbiome firms gain partners, raise money Seres Therapeutics will collaborate with the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Individualized Medicine to develop microbiome-based therapeutics for liver diseases. The partners will look for treatments for primary sclerosing cholangitis, a bile duct disorder, and study the role of the microbiome in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Separately, Vedanta Biosciences, another firm trying to develop therapeutics to modulate the microbiome, has raised $50 million. The funding round, which will support several clinical studies, was led by PureTech, Rock Springs Capital, Invesco Asset Management, and Health for Life Capital.—LISA JARVIS
Evolva to develop a route to make two steviol glycosides, called rebaudioside M and D, via fermentation from sugar rather than by extracting the relatively rare compounds from the stevia plant. ▸ Grodno Azot, a stateowned enterprise in Grodno, Belarus, was the scene of a deadly accident last week. There, two workers were killed after inhaling fumes from a smoky fire at a nitrogen fertilizer plant. ▸ 5AM Venture Management has raised $285 million for a life sciences venture capital fund. The money will finance early-stage companies developing drugs, drug delivery technology, instrumentation, and reagents.
▸ Amyris has signed a research agreement with Janssen Biotech, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, to use the Amyris technology platform to develop a library of natural and natural-like compounds. Researchers will test the compounds’ efficacy against a target identified by Janssen using in vivo testing. ▸ Takeda Pharmaceutical has teamed with Roivant Sciences to form Myovant Sciences. Myovant has been granted the rights to Takeda’s relugolix, currently in late-stage studies for the treatment of uterine fibroids, endometriosis, and prostate cancer, as well as TAK-448 for the treatment of infertility in women.
JUNE 13, 2016 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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