Business Roundup

SK Group, a South Korean conglomerate, has invested $50 million in Austin, Texas-based HelioVolt, a manufacturer of high-efficiency, thin-film solar modules. The two firms will collaborate on technology and work to expand HelioVolt’s manufacturing operations.

Daesan MMA, a 50-50 joint venture of Mitsubishi Rayon and Honam Petrochemical, will build a 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate facility in Daesan, South Korea. The plant will come on-line in 2013 with 11,000 metric tons per year of capacity for the acrylate, which is used in paints and adhesives.

Electrochaea is partnering with the energy company E.ON, Denmark’s University of Aarhus, and an energy trading firm to test technology that uses electricity to convert carbon dioxide into methane. The start-up firm’s technology was developed by professor Laurens Mets at the University of Chicago.

Quanterix, a maker of diagnostic molecular arrays, has named Martin D. Madaus as CEO. He retains his position as chairman of Quanterix. Madaus was CEO of bioresearch products maker Millipore until Germany’s Merck bought it last year.

Air Liquide has been awarded a $125,000 grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for preclinical study of xenon gas inhalation therapy to reduce the involuntary movements that are a side effect of l-dopa, the standard Parkinson’s disease treatment. Xenon is currently used as a general anesthetic.

GalChimia, based in Spain, will synthesize milligram amounts of promising anticancer compounds identified by Israel’s HQL Pharmaceuticals. Using a computational screening approach, HQL is looking for inhibitors of protein-protein interactions in apoptotic pathways leading to cell death.

Tokai Pharmaceuticals has raised $23 million to support the clinical development of galeterone, a prostate cancer treatment that is its lead drug candidate. The financing round included the company’s current investors: Novartis Venture Fund and Apple Tree Partners.

Merck Serono has acquired rights to PI-2301, a peptide copolymer that has completed Phase Ib trials as a multiple sclerosis treatment. The drug was previously being developed by Peptimmune, a Cambridge, Mass.-based firm that went bankrupt earlier this year.