Business Roundup

Formosa Petrochemical has received air permits from Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality for a $9 billion project it is considering building in Saint James Parish. The project still requires a final go-ahead from Formosa.

Showa Denko will build a $28 million facility in Shanghai to make high-purity gases for the electronics industry. Output will include nitrous oxide, used to form oxidized films, and octafluorocyclobutane, used to etch the films.

Livent has lowered its earnings forecast for the fourth quarter and full-year 2019. The company, a spin-off from FMC, attributes the revision to lower-than-expected prices for lithium chemicals.

Ionomr Innovations, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has raised $3 million in a seed round of funding to develop ion-exchange membranes and related polymer products. The start-up makes materials for fuel cells, hydrogen production, and batteries.

Boragen, one of C&EN’s 10 Start-Ups to Watch in 2017, has raised $2 million from existing investors to support its pipeline of boron-based active ingredients. The company recently signed an R&D agreement with an animal-health company to advance compounds targeting canine atopic dermatitis.

AstraZeneca is partnering with MiNA Therapeutics to study the potential of using small activating RNA (saRNA) to treat metabolic diseases by boosting gene expression. If the studies go well, AstraZeneca could license an saRNA therapy from MiNA.

BioIntervene has raised $30 million in series A financing to develop nonaddictive painkillers. The firm has designed small-molecule agonists of the adenosine A₃ receptor, whose role in pain was discovered in 2012 by Daniela Salvemini, a professor at Saint Louis University.

Ionis Pharmaceuticals has signed a deal worth up to $1.4 billion to license Centyrins—a binding protein alternative to antibodies—from Aro Biotherapeutics. Ionis hopes that Centyrin–antisense oligonucleotide conjugate drugs will reach organs beyond the liver.