Business Roundup

Altana has invested $135 million in Israel’s Landa Digital Printing, which is developing a water-based digital printing process called

BioAmber has secured a $20 million loan that it will use to complete the construction of its biobased succinic acid plant in Sarnia, Ontario. The company says the 30,000-metric-ton-per-year facility will be the world’s largest such plant when it opens in early 2015.

Sigma-Aldrich Fine Chemicals will join with Applied Genetic Technologies, a developer of eye disease therapies, to provide gene therapy manufacturing services. AGT will help engineer adeno-associated virus-based vectors for customers. SAFC will manufacture the vectors using AGT’s HAVE technology.

H.B. Fuller will spend about $230 million to acquire Tonsan Adhesive, which calls itself China’s largest independent engineering adhesives provider. Tonsan has about $100 million in annual sales of silicone, epoxy, anaerobic, and cyanoacrylate adhesives.

Spectris, a British maker of instruments and controls, has acquired Claisse, a Canadian provider of sample preparation equipment for atomic spectroscopy. Claisse, which has annual sales of about $13 million, will become part of Spectris’s PANalytical business.

Roche will use nanomedicine technology called Accurins from Bind Therapeutics in areas outside oncology. Accurins are polymeric nanoparticles designed to keep a therapeutic payload circulating within the bloodstream. Cambridge, Mass.-based Bind already has deals with Amgen, Astra­Zeneca, and Pfizer.

Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center have formed a partnership under which Alexion will back rare-disease-related research programs at the hospital in exchange for rights to license them. The medical center will receive milestone payments and royalties on any resulting products.

Numerate, a San Bruno, Calif.-based biotech firm, has raised $8 million in a funding round led by Atlas Venture and Lilly Ventures. Numerate is applying machine-learning algorithms to small-molecule drug discovery.