Business Roundup

Momentive Performance Materials is building a liquid silicone rubber compounding facility in Leverkusen, Germany. To open by year’s end, the plant will make new products such as a fuel-resistant fluorinated rubber and a silver-containing antimicrobial rubber, Momentive says.

Bridge12 Technologies has won a $300,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant to commercialize dynamic-nuclear-polarization-enhanced NMR spectroscopy. The firm was recently founded by former MIT scientists. It says the technology can accelerate NMR experiments from weeks to minutes.

Chemtura says the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York has confirmed its bankruptcy reorganization plan. The company expects to emerge from Chapter 11 “in the upcoming weeks” as soon as the plan’s conditions are satisfied.

Voltaix and South Korea’s Wonik Materials are planning to build a 25,000-metric-ton-per-year facility for the chemical vapor deposition precursor germane (GeH4) in South Korea’s Choong Chung Nam Do province. Voltaix operates a similar-sized plant in Branchburg, N.J.

InChem Corp., the sole U.S. producer of phenoxy resins, has acquired a chemical plant in Duncan, S.C., that it will rename Toll Solutions. InChem plans to offer toll manufacturing services at the site, which was once owned by Wacker Chemie.

Immune Design has exclusively licensed its glucopyranosyl lipid adjuvant (GLA) to MedImmune for use in infectious disease vaccines. MedImmune will make up to $221 million in licensing and development milestone payments. GLA is a toll-like receptor 4 agonist in early clinical development.

PPD and Bend Research will collaborate on customer projects and refer potential business to one another in the areas of drug formulation, analytical testing, and clinical supplies manufacturing. One emphasis will be on particle engineering and inhalation formulation development.

Celtic Therapeutics, a drug-focused private equity firm, has invested in Resolvyx Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that is developing naturally occurring, small-molecule lipid mediators. Celtic gets rights to acquire RX-10045, a Resolvyx dry-eye treatment set to enter Phase III trials next year.