NEWS
€6.3m
EU Horizon 2020 research grant awarded to global health technology company, Royal Philips and its consortium partners Inserm, the University Medical Centre Utrecht, and the SMEs Agena Bioscience, ALS Automation Lab Solutions, Stilla Technologies and UK-based Angle. The four-year project will focus on improving personalised breast and rectal cancer treatment by increasing the accuracy of both genetic and functional characterisation using combining advanced blood tests (liquid biopsy) and MRI.
£80m
Awarded to a partnership between Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick, the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership and Coventry City Council to establish the National Battery Manufacturing Development Facility in the region. The investment is being made through the UK government’s £246m Faraday Battery Challenge initiative. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has also announced a further £40m of investment through the programme, which will be allocated by Innovate UK to 27 projects.
€2.5m
EU Horizon 2020 research grant awarded to biopharmaceutical company, Cristal Therapeutics, to perform Phase 2 clinical trials of the company’s lead nanomedicine candidate for specific solid tumour indications. In addition, the grant will support Cristal Therapeutics’ collaboration with various academic and commercial parties to generate clinical trial material and perform several preclinical mechanism-of-action studies.
Business digest
US biotechnology company, Arvinas has extended its ongoing licence agreement with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, to develop small molecule therapeutics using Arvinas’ propriety technology, Protac, which targets disease-causing cellular proteins. Under the revised terms of the agreement, Arvinas will receive development and commercialisation milestone payments of around $650m based on achieving predetermined milestones as well as tiered-royalties.
AstraZeneca (AZ) is entering into joint venture with the Chinese Future Industry Investment Fund to form Dizal Pharmaceutical, an equally-owned, stand-alone company in China. The new company will focus on the discovery, development and commercialisation of new medicines in oncology, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and respiratory illnesses, which are currently in AZ’s preclinical development pipeline.
BASF, Henkel and venture capital firm Phoenix Venture Partners, among others, are investing $8m in the US functional chemistry firm NBD Nano, headquartered in Boston, Ma. NBD Nano has a propriety technology platform that gives a variety of plastic surfaces properties such as repellency or adhesion for applications in electronics, consumer goods and the automotive industries. In addition, BASF has opened a new, world-scale catalysts manufacturing plant in Caojing, Shanghai, China. The plant is BASF’s first chemical catalysts manufacturing facility in the Asia Pacific region.
Bayer and Japanese biopharmaceutical company, PeptiDream, have entered into a drug discovery collaboration. Under the agreement, the two companies will use PeptiDream’s proprietary Peptide Discovery Platform System technology to identify new drugs in areas such as oncology and cardiology.
Beximco Pharmaceuticals, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has won the Scrip Award for the Best Company in an Emerging Market. The Scrip Awards recognise the roles that pharmaceutical, biotech and other related industries play in improving healthcare.
The biomedical academic–industry research initiative, BioMed X, based at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, is collaborating with Boehringer Ingelheim to investigate bacterial modulation of innate immunity as the starting point for treating autoimmune diseases and cancer.
US thermoplastic resin producer, Braskem, and Danish-based catalysts company, Haldor Topsoe, have signed a technological cooperation agreement to develop a biobased route to monoethylene glycol (MEG) from sugar. The agreement calls for the construction of a demonstration plant in Denmark, with operation due to begin in 2019.
US-based life sciences company, Cambrex, which provides services and technologies for the development and commercialisation of small molecule therapeutics, has completed expansion of cGMP small scale capacity at its Charles City, Iowa plant. The project has seen the installation of two 500 gallon glass lined reactors and creates a third small scale work center.
Swiss contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), Celonic has acquired Glycotope’s biomanufacturing facility in Heidelberg, Germany. The acquisition is expected to accelerate the company’s growth, driven by expanded GMP manufacturing assets and by an immediate investment in capacity for commercial supply.
Citoxlab, a non-clinical contract research organisation (CRO), has acquired US-based CRO, Xenometrics, which specialises in the assessment of safety, pharmacology and pharmacokinetics of new drug candidates.
Speciality chemicals company, Clariant and Tiangang Auxiliary, a private company which produces light stabilisers in China, have kicked-off their joint venture with the purchase of a site within the Cangzhou National Coastal-Port Economy and Technology Development Zone, Hebei province. The collaboration will build a production facility for the joint manufacture of process and light stabilisers, which is scheduled to come on stream in the first half of 2019.
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