Business Roundup

Sabic is increasing its stake in the Swiss specialty chemical company Clariant to 31.5% from nearly 25%, pending regulatory approval. The Saudi petrochemical maker says the purchase is meant to boost its position in specialties.

Inpria has raised $31 million in series C funding from investors including JSR, Air Liquide, and TSMC Partners. The Oregon-based firm is developing tin oxide photoresists intended to enable extreme-ultraviolet-light lithography for semiconductor manufacturing.

Advion, a maker of mass spectrometry and chromatography devices, will merge with Interchim, a maker of chromatography instruments and consumables. The two firms had worked together on a system that combines an Advion mass spec with an Interchim flash chromatograph.

Boost Biomes, a San Francisco–based start-up developing a microbiome discovery platform, has received undisclosed seed funding from the US arm of Japan’s Kureha. Boost’s platform identifies interactions between microbes and screens microbial combinations for use in fungicides or food preservatives.

Solenis has agreed to acquire the paper chemical business of ChemSystems, a South African chemical firm specializing in water-intensive industries. ChemSystems’ paper business has served as Solenis’s paper chemical distributor in Africa.

Solvias, a Swiss contract drug research firm with more than 500 employees, is getting an investment of undisclosed size from Water Street Healthcare Partners. Solvias CEO Karen Huebscher and her management team will remain after the investment is finalized later this year, according to Water Street.

Avantium has sold its portfolio of biobased aromatics patents to TNO, a Dutch research organization. TNO is developing its own bioaromatics technology and recently created a spin-off company, Relement, to commercialize it.

Domain Therapeutics has acquired the fellow French firms Prestwick Chemical and Neurofit. Prestwick will double Domain’s medicinal chemistry resources and help it develop drugs targeting G protein–coupled receptors, Domain says.