Business Roundup

Celanese will acquire the nylon compounding business of the Israeli firm Nilit for an undisclosed sum. Celanese says the purchase will extend its role as a supplier of engineered materials.

Chemtura’s Great Lakes Solutions business has opened a 1,000-m² pilot plant at its bromine products facility in El Dorado, Ark. The company says the new plant will create six high-paying R&D jobs.

DIC, the Japanese dyes and pigments producer, will pay $229 million for a 19.5% stake in Taiyo Holdings, a maker of materials used in printed circuit boards. Taiyo employs 1,200 people and recorded sales of $440 million in its latest fiscal year.

Janssen R&D has formed two microbiome science collaborations. With DayTwo and Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, Janssen will pursue microbiome-based treatments for metabolic disorders. And it is backing Caelus Health, a Belgian firm developing treatments for obesity-associated type 2 diabetes.

Astellas Pharma has licensed Auration Biotech’s AU-935, a treatment for eardrum perforation that is based on heparin-binding epidermal growth factor-like growth factor. The drug is being developed as a topical application to replace surgery.

Cytokinetics has sold some of the potential royalties on omecamtiv mecarbil, an investigational heart drug, to Royalty Pharma for $90 million. Cytokinetics put $40 million of the cash into Phase III development of the drug with its partner Amgen in exchange for higher royalties from Amgen.

Spero Therapeutics has acquired a set of antibacterial candidates from Pro Bono Bio’s Cantab Anti Infectives subsidiary. They join two compounds Spero is developing to treat Gram-negative bacterial infections.

Takeda Pharmaceutical will pay Exelixis $50 million for rights to develop cabozantinib, Exelixis’s leading oncology medicine, in Japan. Cabozantinib was approved in the U.S. last year for the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma.