Business Roundup

Sigma-Aldrich's SAFC fine chemicals business will invest $4.5 million in its Madison, Wis., plant. The company will add two 400-L and two 100-L reactors for high-potency active pharmaceutical ingredients. Earlier, it added capabilities for solid-form testing and analysis.

Hercules has purchased Dexter Chemical's business in phosphate ester surfactants, used in paints and coatings to enhance gloss retention, promote surface wetting, and improve color stability. The products will become part of Hercules' Aqualon coatings additives business.

The Finnish government has sold a 32.1% stake in Kemira to Finnish investors for roughly $900 million. With the sale, Kemira's largest shareholder is now Oras Invest, a family-owned industrial investment company. The Finnish government still holds 16.5% of Kemira's shares.

Bayer MaterialScience is taking over the polyurethane systems firm Brahe, in the Czech Republic. Brahe opened its site in Cerekvice, close to the Polish border, in mid-2006 to focus on rigid polyurethane foam for the insulation of refrigerating appliances and water heaters.

Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb have finalized an agreement announced earlier this year under which the drug majors will collaborate on DGAT-1 inhibitors, a class of compounds with potential to treat metabolic disorders, including obesity and diabetes.

Codexis has licensed intellectual property from California Institute of Technology for preparing and identifying drug metabolites. The technology, based on a family of bacterial cytochrome P450 enzymes, will be incorporated into research tools for drug discovery and development.

Aesica Pharmaceuticals, a supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredients formed in a 2004 management buyout from BASF, has opened a pilot plant in Cramlington, England. The plant will enable Aesica to supply compounds in amounts from 10 to 100 kg to customers for use in clinical development programs.

Families of Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a nonprofit group, will work with Tikvah Therapeutics to develop TIK-201, a treatment for spinal muscular atrophy. The partners hope to begin enrolling patients for a clinical trial of TIK-201, a new formulation of sodium phenylbutyrate, in the first half of 2008.