Business Roundup

Oxford Catalysts has signed a letter of intent with PTT, Thailand’s state-owned energy company, to help make gas-to-liquids fuel technology work on a small scale. PTT will provide Oxford $5 million over two years to develop Oxford’s microchannel methane-steam reforming technology.

DuPont has opened a photovoltaic application laboratory at its European technical center in Geneva. The facility will house collaborative research among DuPont scientists, customers, and academic scientists on designing new solar modules and bringing down costs for high-performance photovoltaics.

Dow Venture Capital led a $1.5 million round of financing for Clean Filtration Technologies, a Redwood City, Calif.-based firm that has developed a water filtration device designed to remove solids from difficult-to-filter water. CFT expects to raise another $1.5 million later this year.

AkzoNobel will invest close to $14 million in its coatings research lab in Felling, England, by early 2011. The Dutch firm will add labs for fire-protection testing and powder-coating polymers to the site, which already houses more than 260 R&D employees.

GlaxoSmithKline has licensed Apeiron Biologics’ APN01, an enzyme therapeutic now in Phase I development for the treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome. Apeiron will get $17.7 million up front and up to $332 million in milestone payments.

Poniard Pharmaceuticals is cutting its workforce by 57% to a total of 21 employees. The South San Francisco-based firm says its remaining employees will focus on the development of pico­platin as a solid tumor treatment.

Spectrum Pharmaceuticals has licensed TopoTarget’s belinostat, a histone deacetylase inhibitor now in a special clinical trial as a therapy for relapsed or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma. TopoTarget will get $30 million up front and as much as $320 million in milestone payments.

Abbott Laboratories will pay French biotech firm Pierre Fabre Laboratories $25 million up front for access to h224G11, a monoclonal antibody in preclinical trials for cancer. The antibody binds to cMet, a protein kinase implicated in cancer cell migration and blood vessel formation. Pierre Fabre also gets two years of research funding.