Business Roundup

Air Products & Chemicals has agreed to buy out DuPont in the companies’ DuPont Air Products NanoMaterials joint venture. Formed in 2000, DA NanoMaterials produces chemical mechanical planarization slurries based on colloidal silica for the semiconductor and wafer polishing industries.

Dow Chemical is donating $3.5 million to the College of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, to rebuild the school’s undergraduate teaching labs and design a green-chemistry-based curriculum. The gift is in addition to funding Dow is providing Berkeley and other schools to support breakthrough chemical technologies (C&EN, Oct. 10, 2011, page 9).

Momentive Performance Materials plans to expand a three-year-old manufacturing and application development center in Chennai, India. The firm says the enlarged facilities will allow it to expand its specialty silicones business in India, the Middle East, and South Asia.

Elevance Renewable Sciences and Arkema have formed a global partnership to develop and produce renewable specialty polymers from Elevance raw materials such as 9-decenoic methyl ester. Elevance makes specialty chemicals from natural oils via olefin metathesis.

Lonza and Eclipse Therapeutics have formed a partnership to manufacture Eclipse’s cancer therapeutic antibody, ET-101. Under the agreement, Lonza will produce Phase I clinical material at its facility in Slough, England.

Certara, a drug development software and consulting firm in St. Louis, has agreed to acquire Simcyp, a British research company. Simcyp has developed simulation software for predicting the fate of drugs in virtual populations.

Concert Pharmaceuticals has licensed rights to deuterium-modified dextromethorphan to Avanir Pharmaceuticals for the potential treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. Avanir will make milestone payments for successful development of the drug.

Bristol-Myers Squibb and Duke Translational Medicine Institute are expanding their partnership to include the clinical development of BMS-986202, an LPA1 receptor antagonist for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The organizations will jointly design a Phase II study as well as biomarker validation studies.