Business Roundup

Lubrizol will spend $25 million to expand its Calvert City, Ky., plant, which makes Carbopol polymers and Pemulen polymeric emulsifiers. A recent $10 million project at the site boosted safety management and added a quality lab.

Celanese is expanding polyacetal production in Frankfurt by 20,000 metric tons per year. To be completed in 18 to 24 months, the project will make the Frankfurt site home to the largest polyacetal plant in the world, Celanese says.

Fulcrum BioEnergy has raised $20 million from undisclosed investors. The company is in the final phase of building its first household waste-to-fuels project, which is expected to open in 2020 outside of Reno, Nev.

WuXi AppTec has launched a library of what it says are 80 billion DNA-encoded small molecules for drug discovery. A team of experts built the library over the past two years, the firm says, and will add 10 billion to 20 billion more compounds.

Chemours is increasing capacity for perfluoroalkoxy polymers to meet demand from semiconductor customers. Capacity at the firm’s Parkersburg, W.Va., plant, already up 15% after a recent project, will be raised again by the end of this year for a total increase of 25%, the firm says.

CuraSen Therapeutics has launched with $54.5 million in series A financing to develop small-molecule drugs for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases. CuraSen is based on the research of Stanford University neuroscientist Mehrdad Shamloo.

Stoke Therapeutics, a start-up developing antisense oligonucleotide therapies for genetic diseases that launched earlier this year, has raised $90 million in series B financing. Stoke’s most advanced program is for Dravet syndrome, a form of epilepsy.

Qpex Biopharma has launched with $33 million in series A financing to develop β-lactamase inhibitor antibiotics that it acquired from the Medicines Company. Qpex also has a partnership with the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research & Development Authority that could net it $132 million.