BUSINESS ROUNDUP

Air Products & Chemicals has acquired all outstanding shares in Air Products Shanfeng, making the Chinese joint venture a wholly owned subsidiary. Now called Air Products & Chemicals (Changzhou), the subsidiary produces triethylenediamine, a polyurethane catalyst, at a plant in Changzhou, Jiangsu province.

Konarka Technologies, a developer of polymer-based solar cells, has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with DuPont. Konarka says the deal gives it access to intellectual property from DuPont and the University of California, Santa Barbara. DuPont developed the technology as part of its efforts in organic light-emitting diode displays.

PCAS, the French fine chemicals firm, has increased its stake in Proteus, a protein production technology developer, to 32% from 6% previously. The two formed a joint venture last year to discover chemobiocatalytic routes to fine chemicals production.

BASF has opened a tile adhesives plant in Foshan, in southern China's Guangdong province. With an annual capacity of 50,000 metric tons, the facility will make adhesives, leveling products, tile mortars, and waterproofing materials. Foshan is China's main production base for ceramics.

Rohm and Haas plans to increase prices for most of its chemical products by 5-15% to cover escalating raw material costs. The firm says its raw material costs have risen by $100 million over the past 12 months.

Chemizon, a South Korean contract research firm, will provide Array BioPharma with medicinal chemistry services, including chemical synthesis and new-route research. Earlier this month, Chemizon expanded an existing service agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical.

Novartis is eliminating 1,260 positions in its U.S. pharmaceutical sales and marketing organization. The firm, which says it can accomplish most of the job cuts by not filling vacant positions, expects cost savings of about $230 million next year.

Pfizer will stop selling Exubera, an inhaled insulin product the company once expected to be a blockbuster drug. The company has taken a pretax charge against earnings of $2.8 billion related to the decision.

King Pharmaceuticals is cutting its head count by 20%, or roughly 540 employees, as it shifts from manufacturing and marketing products to acquiring late-stage compounds in neuroscience and hospital/acute care indications. King also anticipates the loss of patent protection on its hypertension drug Altace, which racked up $653 million in sales last year.

Avant Immunotherapeutics and Celldex Therapeutics are merging in an all-stock deal to create a biotech company focused on monoclonal antibodies and vaccines targeting oncology and infectious and inflammatory diseases. Called Avant, the combined entity will have three compounds in mid- to late-stage clinical trials and six candidates in early-stage development.