Business Roundup

ChromaScape, a pigments, colorants, and additives maker, has bought Greenville Colorants for an undisclosed sum. Greenville, which runs a plant in South Carolina, provides liquid and powder dyes for the paper, printing ink, and textile industries.

BASF and IntelliSense.io have formed a partnership to apply artificial intelligence to mineral processing. BASF will power its Intelligent Mine service with IntelliSense.io technology to support mining functions such as grinding, thickening, and pumping.

Joywell Foods has raised $6.9 million from Evolv Ventures, a fund backed by Kraft Heinz, and other investors to develop sweeteners based on rare plant proteins. The California-based start-up uses fermentation to produce proteins found in exotic fruits, such as miraculin from Synsepalum dulcificum.

Twist Bioscience, a synthetic DNA producer, has linked up with Invetx, a developer of animal health products, to offer novel antibodies that can treat serious diseases in dogs and cats. The firms want to translate successful human treatments for the $34 billion veterinary medicine market.

Gelest has completed an expansion of personal care pigment production at its plant in Pennsylvania. The firm, which is being acquired by Mitsubishi Chemical, offers inorganic colorants with varying solubility properties.

Liquid Wire raised $10 million in a series A round earlier this month led by the health-care investment firm Deerfield Management. Liquid Wire makes flexible electronics, including sensors and transmitters, using patented mixtures of gallium alloys and gallium oxide.

4D Medicine has spun out of the University of Birmingham and the University of Warwick and raised about $600,000 in funding. The company says its polycarbonate-based resins can be printed into a 3-D scaffold that is implanted into patients to help them heal more quickly from medical procedures.

Forge Biologics has launched with $40 million to contract manufacture and develop in-house adeno-associated viral vector gene therapies. The cash will let Forge expand production capacity at its Columbus, Ohio, viral vector facility from the current maximum of 50 L to 500 L by mid-2021.