Business Roundup

Mitsubishi Chemical will sell its Chinese purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant to Union King Holdings and its Indian PTA plant to Chatterjee Management Co. Combined annual sales of the businesses exceed $1 billion. The Japanese firm will keep PTA plants in Indonesia and South Korea.

Sumitomo Chemical will build a 3,000-metric-ton-per-year polyethersulfone plant in Chiba, Japan, the company’s second such facility at the site. Polyethersulfone is a high-end engineering plastic used in applications such as carbon fiber-epoxy airplane parts.

DyStar, a dyes producer, will build a 3,000-m² R&D center at its site in Nanjing, China. Expected to open in March 2017, the facility will study new molecules and develop chemicals for use in textiles and other industries.

Dow Chemical researcher Abhishek Roy will receive the Society of Chemical Industry, America Section, Gordon E. Moore Medal in Philadelphia on Sept. 16. The medal, which recognizes young innovators, goes to Roy as the primary inventor of energy-saving Filmtec Eco reverse-osmosis membranes for water purification.

Just Biotherapeutics has completed a $14 million Series A2 funding round led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and including Merck & Co., Lilly Asia Ventures, and Arch Venture Partners. Founded in 2014, Just seeks to lower the cost of biologic drug production.

X-Chem and AbbVie have teamed up to use X-Chem’s DNA-encoded library, which includes more than 120 billion compounds, to find drug candidates against oncology and immunology targets. AbbVie is the latest partner for X-Chem, which was formed in 2009 by former executives of Praecis Pharmaceuticals.

Pfizer has prevailed in its bid to acquire Bind Therapeutics, agreeing to pay $40 million in a court-authorized auction. Bind, a drug development company focused on cancer, filed for bankruptcy in May.