Business digest

GSK has announced that its independent consumer healthcare company, which includes Sensodyne, Voltaren, Panadol and Centrum Business, is to be called Haleon. This follows a series of investments and strategic changes to GSK’s consumer health business over the last eight years, including integration of the consumer product portfolios from Novartis and Pfizer, resulting in a global business generating annual sales of approximately £10bn.

US chemical and specialty materials company Celanese has agreed to acquire a majority of the Mobility & Materials business of DuPont for $11bn in cash, providing Celanese with a broad portfolio of engineered thermoplastics and elastomers.

Eli Lilly has launched the Lilly Institute for Genetic Medicine with an investment of approximately $700m to establish a state-of-the-art facility at a new site in Boston. This is part of Lilly’s strategy to advance RNA-based therapeutics and builds on the 2020 acquisition and expansion of gene-therapy company Prevail Therapeutics in New York City.

Valneva Scotland, a subsidiary of French specialty vaccine biotech Valneva, has been awarded R&D funding of up to £20m by Scottish Enterprise. The investment from Scotland’s national economic development agency is expected to be delivered over the next three years.

California-based National Resilience, a complex medicines manufacturing company, has signed a manufacturing services agreement with Takeda’s Plasma-Derived Therapies Business Unit. Resilience will support the development and manufacture of multiple products in Takeda’s medicines portfolio.

Following years of collaboration and joint ventures, North American InterVivo Solutions and UK/Europe-based Transpharmation have come together as sister CROs with a joint management team.

Private biotech Curve Therapeutics and MSD (Merck) are collaborating in research to discover and validate modulators of up to five therapeutic targets using Curve’s Microcycle technology, initially for oncology and neurology indications.

A new world-class UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) research facility dedicated to the development and testing of Covid-19 vaccines has opened at the UKHSA Porton Down site in Salisbury. The £27m Robinson Building was officially opened by Health Secretary Sajid Javid and UKHSA CEO, Professor Dame Jenny Harries, on 17 February 2022. It is one of two facilities that make up a new £65m Vaccine Evaluation Centre, built to help develop and license new vaccines and be a global leader in testing against future variants of SARS-CoV-2. The project is fully funded by the Vaccine Taskforce, a joint unit between the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department of Health and Social Care.

A project designed to produce large amounts of e-methanol for shipping and aviation is to be accelerated by two years towards large-scale production. The partnership behind the Green Fuels for Denmark project comprises Maersk, DFDS and DNV and expects to produce 50,000t of sustainable fuels in 2025.

BASF and foam specialist NEVEON are collaborating in the recycling of mattresses, aiming to establish a closed product loop and avoiding thermal recycling or landfill. BASF is developing a wet chemical recycling process in which the original polyols can be recovered and used again to produce high-quality flexible foam blocks.

Anglo-Korean next-generation battery company Eurocell is set to build its first European gigafactory, using proven technology, which is ready for scaled-up manufacturing. With an initial £600m investment planned over two phases, it intends to supply batteries for European energy storage, automotive, and e-mobility applications.

Based at Monash University, a new Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre for Cryo-Electron Microscopy of Membrane Proteins (CCeMMP) has opened to conduct research in drug discovery and development, and train a new generation of industry-ready researchers.

US CDMO TriRx Pharmaceutical Services has acquired the manufacturing site of Elanco Animal Health in Speke, UK.

Belgian multinational Solvay has entered into an agreement to license its hydrogen-peroxide technology to Chinese company Hubei Sanning Chemical Industry. The aim is to launch a 500kt/year caprolactam facility by the end of 2023.

Thermo Fisher Scientific is investing $40m to expand its single-use technology (SUT) manufacturing facility. The expansion is part of the company’s $650m investment programme to help ensure flexible, scalable and reliable bioprocessing production capacity exists for critical materials used in developing new and existing biologics and vaccines.

mRNA pioneer Moderna is looking at the UK’s ‘Golden Triangle’ (Oxford, Cambridge, London) to invest in local research and manufacturing, and to work with the NHS for clinical trial work.

Piramal Pharma Solutions’ CDMO business has expanded its Antibody-Drug Conjugate capabilities at its Grangemouth facility in Scotland and invested in new Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient infrastructure at its Morpeth facility in England. These expansions and upgrades total investment of £55m in UK-based drug development and manufacturing capabilities.

BASF has expanded the production capacity of its enzymes plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany, significantly increasing the annual number of feasible fermentation runs. The larger production capacity enables BASF to meet the growing demand for supply of feed enzymes Natuphos E (phytase), Natugrain TS (xylanase and glucanase) and the recently launched Natupulse TS (mannanase).

The University of Birmingham has licensed the rights to a ‘supercritical water’ technology to Stopford, a UK multi-disciplinary consultancy, engineering design and project management services company. Stopford will develop a novel process for recycling mixed plastic packaging that delivers a greater proportion of high-value recycled plastic with less emissions, fewer processing steps than current recycling methods, and no solvent residues. The approach was invented by Dr Bushra Al-Duri from the University’s School of Chemical Engineering and further developed during a collaborative project with Stopford.

LyondellBasell has developed polymers based on advanced recycled post-consumer materials to offer a circular solution for coffee capsules. These CirculenRevive polymers are made using an advanced recycling process to convert plastic waste into feedstock, which is used to produce new polymers using a mass balance approach. They will be used to make coffee capsules for Nestlé.

Johnson Matthey and German manufacturer CropEnergies, a specialist in biomass-based sustainable chemicals and producer of ethanol, have entered into an engineering, license and technical services agreement for a plant to allow CropEnergies to produce renewable ethyl acetate from sustainable ethanol using Johnson Matthey’s commercial ethyl acetate technology. The plant will produce 50,000t/year of renewable ethyl acetate from renewable ethanol feedstock using renewable energy to drive the process.

Century Therapeutics and Bristol Myers Squibb have agreed to develop and commercialise up to four induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) derived, engineered natural killer cell (iNK) and/or T cell (iT) programmes for hematologic malignancies and solid tumours. The first two programmes include a programme in acute myeloid leukaemia and a programme in multiple myeloma, which could incorporate either the iNK or a gamma delta iT platform.

Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant has agreed to divest its 50% stake in the joint venture which owns Scientific Design Company. The beneficiary is its long-term joint-venture partner SABIC, the Saudi Arabian multinational chemical manufacturing company.

Unilever, in partnership with speciality chemicals company Evonik, has harnessed a naturally-occurring process and turned it into a renewable ingredient – rhamnolipid. Most cleaning products contain surfactants – chemicals that create foam to break down oil, grease and soil. These are typically made from petrochemicals – a non-renewable, carbon-heavy resource. Rhamnolipids are different. They are a biosurfactant and in this case are made using sugar as their main raw material – and are fully biodegradable, with a low-impact lifecycle.

As part of its 2025 strategy to expand its Active Beauty business, Swiss multinational manufacturer of flavours, fragrances and active cosmetic ingredients Givaudan has acquired a 48% stake in the Nanovetores Group. The purchase is from the Criatec Fund, a Brazilian investment fund focused on innovative, early-stage companies.

French clinical-stage biotech MaaT Pharma and CDMO Skyepharma have entered a partnership to establish the first microbiome ecosystem therapies cGMP manufacturing facility in France