Fine Chemicals Deals Flourish

CPhI, the annual pharmaceutical chemicals trade show, held last week in Frankfurt, brought out the usual selection of companies looking for customers and partners. Northern Ireland’s Almac announced a partnership with Novozymes to conjugate albumin-based proteins to peptides and small-molecule drugs to improve therapeutic half-life and targeting. The collaboration combines Novozymes’s Recombumin Flex technology with Almac’s protein conjugation capabilities. SAFC, the custom manufacturing arm of Sigma-Aldrich, has joined with catalysis developer CatSci, a 2010 AstraZeneca spin-off, to increase access to synthesis technologies. Meanwhile, Paris-based Axyntis has joined with Fuji Silysia Chemical, a Japanese silica chemistry specialist, to acquire Kyralia, a French chromatography services firm. To be renamed Kyrapharm, the operation will move to Axyntis’s site in Pithiviers, France. Separately, Albemarle said it will open a kilogram-scale lab at its pharmaceutical chemicals facility in South Haven, Mich., early next year. The lab will allow Albemarle to handle customer projects from clinical development through commercial production.