Business Roundup

Enerkem and the Spanish oil company Repsol plan to build a waste-to-chemical plant in Tarragona, Spain. The plant will use a gasification process to convert about 400,000 metric tons (t) of municipal waste per year into 220,000 t of methanol.

BP and Cemex will link up to accelerate production of cement with a lower carbon dioxide footprint. Their goal is to reach net-zero carbon by 2050. The firms will examine low-carbon power and transportation; energy efficiency; natural carbon offsets; and carbon capture, utilization, and storage.

Arkema plans to acquire Fort Worth, Texas–based Edge Adhesives, a producer of hot-melt adhesives and pressure-sensitive adhesive tapes used in residential construction. Edge has annual sales of $12 million and about 50 employees.

DuPont will spend $5 million to increase its capacity to make automotive adhesives in Germany and Switzerland. The firm’s focus will be on adhesives for electric vehicles, such as those for battery sealing and assembly.

Bristol Myers Squibb will pay Exscientia, a drug discovery firm that uses artificial intelligence, $50 million to further their alliance. The partners will use AI to accelerate the discovery of small-molecule drugs in areas including oncology and immunology.

Kadmon, a New York City–based biotech firm, will use artificial intelligence supplied by Iktos for an undisclosed drug discovery program. Paris-based Iktos employs a structure-based modeling technique to identify compounds that match predefined target profiles.

Interius BioTherapeutics has raised $76 million in series A financing to develop technology that will allow chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells to be grown directly inside a person. Current CAR T cells are engineered outside a person and then infused to treat disease.

Vipergen will use its DNA-encoded-library technology to provide leads to Anavo Therapeutics for its cancer drug program targeting phosphatase. Anavo launched in April with about $24 million in financing.