Business Roundup

Momentive Performance Materials is delaying its initial public offering of stock because of “adverse market conditions.” The silicones firm, which has been struggling to eke out profits, hoped to raise $250 million for itself and $100 million for major shareholders in the float.

Wacker Chemie will spend $23 million to boost its presence in China. The company will expand capacity for solid silicone rubber at its Zhangjiagang site and vinyl acetate copolymer dispersions in Nanjing. It will also build R&D labs for silicone fluids, pyrogenic silica, and other materials in Shanghai.

Nippon Shokubai is considering building another acrylic acid plant at its subsidiary in Indonesia. Nippon Shokubai, the world’s largest producer of acrylic polymers used in disposable diapers, says the project would boost its acrylic acid capacity by 25% to 1 million metric tons per year.

Spectrum Chemical Manufacturing will supply research quantities of BASF precious-metal-containing catalysts to pharmaceutical researchers in North America. BASF is prepared to supply larger quantities if projects scale up.

Quotient Sciences has acquired Pharmaterials, a drug development and manufacturing service provider in Reading, England. The deal follows Quotient’s acquisitions of SeaView Research and QS Pharma, both U.S.-based, earlier this year.

Excision BioTherapeutics will exclusively license two new versions of the CRISPR/Cas gene-editing system, called CasX and CasY, from the University of California, Berkeley. The deal indicates interest in finding alternatives to the traditional Cas9 version, currently embroiled in a patent dispute.

Solasia Pharma has picked the contract manufacturing firm Alcami to supply darinaparsin, a mitochondria-targeting active pharmaceutical ingredient, for the treatment of hematologic and solid cancers. Alcami will produce the compound at its plant in Germantown, Wis.

Sanofi will pay multiple sclerosis drug developer Principia Biopharma $40 million up front to develop a small-molecule inhibitor of an enzyme called Bruton’s tyrosine kinase. The deal includes future milestone payments up to $765 million.