Business Roundup

Sun Chemical and its ­parent company, DIC, have acquired Seller Ink Industria e Comércio de Tintas e Vernizes, an ink and coatings manufacturer in Brazil. Seller Ink has a strong presence in the security ink and metal decorating markets, Sun says.

Circularise has raised $1.8 million from the European Union to advance its blockchain technology for plastics recycling. The idea is to foster transparency in the recycling supply chain by securely tracing materials as they move through it.

Danimer Scientific will supply polyhydroxyalkanoate—a biodegradable, biobased polymer—to Plastics Suppliers to make films that can be composted at home. The companies are also working on plastics compostable in soil and water.

Rain Therapeutics has raised $63 million in its second major financing round. The company plans to use the cash to advance its small-molecule pipeline, which includes a pan-HER inhibitor in Phase II studies in breast cancer, an MDM2 inhibitor in Phase I trials in liposarcoma, and a preclinical selective RAD52 inhibitor.

Cambridge Isotope Laboratories is expanding capacityat its site in Xenia, Ohio, to make deuterated benzene. The firm says the project, which will increase capacity by six times, will also allow it to make more deuterated bromobenzene in Andover, Massachusetts.

Luca Science, a Tokyo-based start-up, has raised $9.8 million in series A financing to develop mitochondria as a therapy. The firm suggests that the cellular organelles could treat damaged heart and brain tissue after a heart attack or stroke.

Manifold Bio has raised $5.4 million in seed fundingto develop a bar-coding platform for testing many potential therapeutic proteins in a single experiment. The firm’s cofounders include George Church from Harvard Medical School and his former graduate students Gleb Kuznetsov and Pierce Ogden.

Albemarle will execute two lithium-ion battery research projects for the US Department of Energy. The first aims to cut steps from the production of lithium hydroxide from brine; the second will explore how specialized lithium salts might boost energy density and longevity of nickel-based cathodes.