Business Roundup

Dow says a Canadian court has ordered Nova Chemicals to pay it $1 billion to settle a dispute over Nova’s conduct in running their Joffre, Alberta, ethylene joint venture between 2001 and 2012. Nova can still appeal the judgment, originally issued more than a year ago. Dow also says it expects the court to order Nova to pay additional post-2012 damages.

Polynt-Reichhold, the composites firm formed in the 2016 merger of Polynt and Reichhold, says it wants to invest in US production of maleic and phthalic anhydride, two key raw materials. Building and buying are both options, the firm says.

Clariant has agreed to license its Sunliquid cellulosic ethanol technology to the Polish biofuel producer Orlen Południe. The license is Clariant’s second for the technology, after its 2017 deal with the European ethanol maker Enviral.

Perstorp has developed a new safety protocol for its seven major plants with DuPont Sustainable Solutions. The firm says the initiative stems from its desire to be a top-quartile firm for safety.

ChemAxon and Innoplexus have formed a partnership to provide artificial intelligence–enabled informatics for chemical research. The partners will combine Innoplexus’s AI and blockchain technologies with ChemAxon’s ChemLocator into a system that can search Innoplexus’s Ontosight database.

Clovis Oncology will pay $12 million for rights to radiopharmaceutical technology from 3B Pharmaceuticals. Clovis will initially develop a peptide-targeted radionuclide therapy that stops a protein active in many epithelial cancers.

Tacalyx, a spin-off from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, has secured about $8 million in seed funding. Tacalyx is focused on anti-TACA (tumor-associated carbohydrate antigens) antibody cancer therapies.

Versatope Therapeutics has won a contract with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases worth up to $17.9 million over 5 years. Versatope will use the funds to advance its candidate for a universal flu vaccine.