Business Roundup

Carbon, a Redwood City, Calif.,-based firm developing a 3-D printing technology involving curing photosensitive polymers, has raised $200 million in a series D round of funding. GE Ventures and the Japanese chemical firm JSR participated in the round.

Croda International has acquired IonPhasE, a Finnish supplier of additives that protect plastic products against static electricity, for $28 million. IonPhasE’s additives are found in food packaging and other uses.

Celtic Renewables, a Scottish start-up that ferments whisky waste to butanol, says it has gained permission to build a demonstration plant for its technology in Grangemouth, Scotland. The firm is now seeking to raise $7 million to build it.

Novartis has paid $130 million for Ultragenyx’s rare pediatric disease priority review voucher, which can be used to shorten FDA review of a New Drug Application. Ultragenyx got the voucher with FDA approval of Mepsevii, an enzyme replacement therapy for a rare lysosomal storage disorder.

BioVectra will manufacture ferric citrate for Keryx Biopharmaceuticals. Ferric citrate is the active pharmaceutical ingredient in Keryx’s Auryxia, a kidney disease treatment approved in 2014.

Boehringer Ingelheim will partner with Roche to develop oral treatments for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Roche will supply its Locked Nucleic Acid technology, which it calls an improvement over antisense and siRNA as a way of targeting RNA.

Relay Therapeutics has raised $63 million in series B funding to continue developing cancer treatments. The company studies protein motion, designing drugs based on “movies” of protein structure rather than pictures.

Genentech will collaborate with DiCE Molecules to discover small molecules of interest to Genentech. The partners will use DiCE’s directed evolution technology for optimizing druglike ligands.