NEWS
DowDuPont Speciality Products is increasing production capacity at its Mechelen, Belgium, site to meet customer demand for its high- performance polyamide resin, DuPont Zytel HTN, used in the automotive, consumer and electronics markets. A new production line is expected to begin operation in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Cancer therapeutics company, Inflection Biosciences, based in Dublin and London, is to collaborate with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland to target therapy-resistant breast cancer. The collaboration aims to understand mechanisms of resistance to major breast cancer therapies and examine potential new treatments based on molecules that work by blocking two abnormal proteins – PIM and PI3K – that occur in breast cancer.
Headquartered in Switzerland, global fertiliser company, EuroChem has announced that the first production train of its Phase 1 development at Usolskiy, Russia, is on track to start by end-2017. Once operational, the plant will have a production capacity of 2.3mt/yr of potash. Meanwhile, the company is to sell Severneft-Urengoy to Russian natural gas producer Novatek PJSC. The total resource potential of the site, according to Russian classification, is 918m barrels of oil equivalent of hydrocarbons.
The drug development services provider, Quotient Sciences, headquartered in Nottingham UK, has acquired Reading-based CDMO, Pharmaterials. The acquisition expands Quotient’s formulation and manufacturing services footprint in the UK, and supports the growth of Quotient’s Translational Pharmaceutics platform, following the acquisitions of SeaView Research and QS Pharma in February 2017.
ExxonMobil has been awarded Gold Corporate Partner status for its UK sites in Fawley, Hampshire, and Fife, Scotland, by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). The award is in recognition for the company’s significant efforts in encouraging UK schoolchildren into engineering careers and providing outstanding support to its employees through professional development.
Hikma Pharmaceuticals and Merck kGaA are investing a total of £10m in Biolinq, the next generation minimally- invasive biosensor technology company. Biolinq’s first commercial product will allow diabetic patients to monitor their blood glucose continuously without the pain and hassle of traditional continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems.
Chinese biotech, HitGen has entered into a drug discovery research collaboration with major pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. HitGen will apply its DNA-encoded library design, synthesis and screening, to discover novel leads for Boehringer Ingelheim. Under the terms of the agreement, HitGen will receive upfront payments and be eligible for milestone payments from Boehringer.
French start-up biotech, Inotrem has en- tered into a R&D collaboration agreement with Roche Diagnostics to develop a com- panion diagnostic test for septic shock using a soluble plasma circulating protein (sTREM-1) developed by Inotrem and the Roche proprietary Elecsys platform.
NPL, the UK’s National Measurement In- stitute, and SynbiCITE at Imperial College London have launched a new £7m virtual lab to establish the UK Centre for Engi- neering Biology, Metrology and Stand- ards. The lab will serve as an innovation hub, bridging with leading UK institutes, including LGC and NIBSC, to accelerate the industrialisation of synthetic biology.
US biotechnology company, Evelo Bio- sciences is collaborating with Mayo Clinic to develop and commercialise monoclo- nal microbials for treating inflammatory and neuroinflammatory diseases. Under the terms of the agreement, Evelo has a worldwide licence to the technology and patent estate developed at Mayo Clinic.
Swiss healthcare company, Novartis has entered a memorandum of understand- ing with Advanced Accelerator Appli- cations (AAA) to acquire 100% of the share capital of AAA subject to certain conditions. AAA is a radiopharmaceuti- cal company that develops, produces and commercialises molecular nuclear medicines with potential applications across several oncology early develop- ment programmes.
At Aquatech Amsterdam, at the end of October 2017, Sabic shared its latest services to support the global water industry, such as predictive engineering at its Water
Management Centre of Excellence in Bergen Op Zoom, the Netherlands. At the centre, engineers work with water industry manufacturers to test and optimise products designed using Sabic’s high performance engineering resins. The company also highlighted recent research on Noryl polyphenylene ether (PPE) resins, which include new antifouling properties and anisotropic behaviour, as well as new additions to its range of polyethylene and polypropylene materials for the pipe industry.
At ChinaCoat 2017, held in Shanghai in November, Sweden’s Perstorp has introduced what it claims is the world’s first portfolio of partly- renewable alternatives for the essential polyols, pentaerythritol (Voxtar), trimethylolpropane (Evyron) and neopentyl glycol (Neeture); Voxtar was launched in 2010. The range will be commercially available from January 2018.
Also at ChinaCoat, Clariant introduced the industry’s first renewable-based VOC/SVOC-free and hazard label-free neutralising agent, the 3-in-1 sugar-based Genamin Gluco 50 additive designed to assist formulators in meeting consumer demand for low-odour, healthier and easy-to-apply indoor paints. Specifically for the Chinese market, Clariant offered Ceridust 2740 TP, a blend for incorporation into both water- and solvent-borne industrial coatings. In wood coatings, it is said to provide excellent matting and high clarity properties, while Ceridust 9322F TP, a PTFE-modified solution is said to offer high scratch-resistance in solvent- borne wood coatings. Both can be used in powder coatings.
At Formnext 2017, held in Frankfurt, Germany, in November, Sabic launched a new filament, Lexan EXL AMHI240F, a polycarbonate copolymer, for fused deposition modelling using Stratasys Fortus Classic additive 3D printers. The new filament joins five other filaments based on Sabic’s Ultem polyetherimide resin, Cycola acrylonitrile-butadiene resin and Lexan polycarbonate resin, offering the same composition as the company’s injection moulding grades.
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