Business digest: A round-up of chemicals and pharma industry news

Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company Unilever is investing £80m in an in-house fragrance business in the UK, including a new facility at its Port Sunlight site in NW England. The facility, expected to be operational in 2027, will include a digital fragrance research and innovation lab, compounding facility and evaluation suites. Fragrance development is scheduled to begin in 2025. The investment is part of a £300m UK spend on R&D sites, production facilities and offices over the next two years.

A new US biotech has been launched to create therapeutics to address diseases that arise from activation of Abelson Tyrosine Kinases (c-Abl kinases). ABLi Therapeutics is developing its lead product candidate, Risvodetinib (ABLi-148009) as a potential disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson’s and Parkinson’s-related diseases and a portfolio of second-generation product candidates.

Ratio Therapeutics, a US pharma developing radiopharmaceuticals for cancer treatment and monitoring, has entered into an agreement with the Medical Innovation Technology Management division of US venture capital organisation the Wasatch Group to partner and construct a radiopharmaceutical research and manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City, Utah, US. The facility is anticipated to be fully operational in the second half of 2027.

German chemical major BASF is to expand its production capacity for semiconductor-grade (ultra-pure) sulphuric acid. A new facility at its Ludwigshafen site in Germany will serve growing demand for advanced semiconductor chip manufacturing across Europe as several new chip manufacturing plants are constructed or expanded. Operations are expected to start by 2027.

French pharma major sanofi plans to invest at least $20bn on R&D and manufacturing capacity in the US in the period up to 2030 as the company prepares for the launch of a number of new first- or best-in-class medicines across a number of indications.

US pharma major Eli Lilly is considering Houston, Texas, for the site of a $5.9bn API manufacturing facility as part of its $27bn expansion of its US manufacturing capacity. The company is seeking a state tax break for the facility, which would see construction begin in 2026, becoming operational in 2031.

German-headquartered immunotherapy company BioNTech has expanded its partnership with the UK Government and with the support of a government grant of up to £129m for a ten year period is planning to invest up to £1bn over the period including the establishment of two new R&D centres. The first centre, located in Cambridge, will focus on genomics, oncology, structural biology and regenerative medicine. A second location is currently being planned, but BioNTech also intends estab-lishing its UK headquarters in London where it will house the company’s AI hub, led by its subsidiary InstaDeep.

German pharma Bayer is reorganising its Crop Science division’s activities in the areas of crop protection production and R&D in Germany. In response to significant global manufacturing overcapacity, particularly in Asia, which has resulted in persistently low prices, some of which are below the manufacturing costs of crop protection products in Europe, Bayer will end its activities in Frankfurt am Main after the end of 2028. The company aims to sell parts of the activities, while others will be relocated. Production at its Dormagen site will be streamlined to ensure its competitiveness for the future.

Evotec, a German drug discovery and development company, has been awarded a $2.5m grant from US private charitable organisation, The Gates Foundation (GF), to support the development of next-generation treatment regimens for tuberculosis (TB). This is the second grant awarded to Evotec by the GF that is focused on evaluating new and improved TB therapies using the company’s state-of-the-art translational platforms. Under the new grant, Evotec will further characterise promising regimens using its fully integrated TB platform to accelerate the development of new treatments.

Haleon, a UK consumer healthcare company, and Brightseed, a US developer of AI-driven discovery of bioactive compounds, are collaborating to advance the discovery of plant-based, small molecules with the potential to improve human health. The partnership will leverage Brightseed’s proprietary AI platform, Forager, to accelerate scientific insights into the natural world and support Haleon in delivering science-led health solutions.

An $11.5m sponsorship deal is set to launch a new research institute at US university Tufts that will be focused on materials science and engineering. The Tufts Epsilon Materials Institute is a collaboration between Indian battery materials manufacturer Epsilon Group and the university to advance innovations in materials that address global challenges in energy and sustainability.

Swiss pharma Novartis is acquiring Regulus Therapeutics, a US clinical-stage biopharma focused on developing microRNA therapeutics. Regulus’ lead asset, farabursen, is a potential first-in-class, next-generation oligonucleotide targeting miR-17 for the treatment of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD).

China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), China’s largest supplier of petroleum and petrochemical products, and Syensqo, a Belgian provider of advanced performance materials and chemical solutions, have signed a Strategic Partnership Framework Agreement to foster collaboration in advanced materials and specialty chemicals. The collaboration will focus on carbon fibre and composites, specialty polymers and material solutions for commercial aerospace, transportation and energy sectors and will explore opportunities in supply chain management and sustainability, including the use of circular chemicals and reducing carbon footprint. The two companies will also explore business cooperation in emerging markets such as South America and Asia.

PPG, a US supplier of paints, coatings and specialty materials, is investing $380m to build a new aerospace coatings and sealants manufacturing facility in Shelby, North Carolina, US. Construction will commence in October 2025 and is expected to be completed in the first half of 2027. The facility will employ more than 110 people and produce the full line of PPG’s aerospace coatings and sealants.

German CDMO ProBioGen has signed an agreement with Polpharma Biologics, a Polish biotech developing and manufacturing biosimilars. ProBioGen will conduct high-performance cell line development services for Polpharma’s biosimilar candidate, supporting its expanding pipeline.

UK biopharma AstraZeneca is investing $300m in a new facility in Rockville, Maryland, US, to launch its life-saving cell therapy platforms in the US for critical cancer trials and future commercial supply. More than 150 new skilled jobs will be created to initially focus on manufacturing T-cell therapies to enable clinical trials to be conducted around the world.

German chemicals group Wacker has commenced production of hybrid polymers at its Nünchritz site. Hybrid polymers serve as binders for high-quality adhesives and sealants and are popular because they are easy to use. Such binders are increasingly being employed by manufacturers of construction and assembly adhesives, parquet-flooring adhesives or liquid waterproofing membranes for roofs and balconies. The alpha-silane-terminated hybrid polymers from Wacker enable the formulation of tin-free, consumer-friendly products.

PCI Pharma Services, a US CDMO focused on biopharma therapies, has completed its acquisition of Ajinomoto Althea, a US-based sterile fill-finish CDMO and subsidiary of Japan-based Ajinomoto. Althea specialises in customised, scalable oligonucleotides and peptides, supporting PCI’s existing manufacturing of complex formulations and lyophilisation for a broad range of injectables, including nanoparticles, mRNA, MABs, proteins and other biologics.

Kronos Bio, a US biotech developing small-molecule therapeutics to address cancers and other diseases driven by deregulated transcription, has entered into a definitive merger agreement with US health company Concentra Biosciences. Kronos is being acquired for $0.57/share.

Prilenia Therapeutics, a Dutch biopharma developing treatments for Huntington’s disease (HD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), has entered into a collaboration and licence agreement with Spanish pharma Ferrer for the commercialisation and development of pridopidine in Europe and other select markets. Pridopidine is a potent and highly selective, orally administered sigma-1 receptor (S1R) agonist designed to regulate key neuroprotective mechanisms often impaired in neurodegenerative diseases such as HD or ALS.

US pharma Septerna and Danish pharma Novo Nordisk have signed an exclusive global collaboration and licence agreement to discover, develop and commercialise oral small-molecule medicines for obesity, type 2 diabetes and other cardiometabolic diseases. The companies will initially commence four development programmes for potential small molecule therapies directed to one or more select G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) targets, including the GLP-1, GIP and glucagon receptors.

Swedish chemicals company Perstorp and BRB, a wholly owned subsidiary of Malaysian chemicals producer PETRONAS Chemicals Group Berhad, have inaugurated an innovation hub in Shanghai, China. The laboratory will support growth in the region by increasing technical support for customers with a specific focus on the Asian market, serving various market segments, such as synthetic lubricants, thermal management fluids, personal care and coating solutions, as well as existing silicones and intermediates business.

Think Bioscience, a US small molecule discovery company that uses synthetic biology to find novel binding pockets on challenging drug targets, and CrystalsFirst, a German structure-based drug discovery company, have revealed their ongoing collaboration has led to the identification of novel mechanisms of action for several difficult targets in Think Bioscience’s pipeline. Building on this success, the two companies have agreed to expand their partnership to include additional pipeline programs and expand use of MAGNET, a technology platform that integrates advanced crystallographic techniques with AI to unlock chemical matter for difficult targets.

The lubricants division of Anglo-Dutch oil and gas company Shell has announced that its immersion cooling fluids have been certified by US IC company Intel for use in data centres. Testing by Intel showed that Intel Xeon processors remain as reliable with Shell’s immersion cooling fluids as with traditional air-cooled systems. Immersion cooling involves servers and networking equipment being placed in electrically non-conductive fluid which absorbs and dissipates heat from IT equipment more than one thousand times more efficiently than air-cooling. This results in the cutting of the floor space needed by up to 80%.

German chemical company BASF has signed a cooperation agreement with US hydrogen fuel cell and electrolyser company Plug Power , which will incorporate BASF’s Purivate Pd15 DeOxo catalysts into its hydrogen liquefaction plants. DeOxo catalysts reduce the need for expensive precious metals, enhancing the economic viability of liquid hydrogen plants.

German science and technology company Merck KGaA, and imec, an international R&D organisation active in the fields of nanoelectronics and digital technologies with headquarters in Belgium, have entered a strategic partnership to develop an advanced microphysiological systems (MPS) platform. The collaboration aims to drive both partners’ efforts to make drug discovery and development more efficient by increasing the predictive validity of next-generation preclinical models and progressively reducing the reliance on animal testing.

Thermo Fisher Scientific, a US supplier of analytical instruments and laboratory, pharmaceutical and biotechnology services, has launched an enhanced platform technology and a new CHO K-1 cell line that can reduce timelines for investigational new drug (IND) filing from 13 to nine months. The new CHO K-1 cell line can deliver up to 8g/L, providing higher protein expression levels and stability, allowing greater productivity from pre-clinical phases through to commercial development.