April 16, 2007

Volume 85, Number 16

pp. 24-25

Business Concentrates

Abbott Drops AIDS Drug Price

Abbott Laboratories will drop its price for Kaletra, a protease inhibitor used to treat AIDS, to the equivalent of $1,000 per patient per year in 40 developing countries. The move, facilitated by the World Health Organization, is apparently Abbott's response to a decision by Thailand earlier this year to resort to the compulsory licensing of Kaletra, a practice that reduces health care costs in a way that drug companies view as patent infringement (C&EN, Feb. 5, page 11). Following Thailand's decision, Abbott announced that it would stop selling Kaletra and other patented drugs in Thailand, a move that the nongovernmental organization Doctors Without Borders called "a major betrayal of patients." Abbott had already been under fire for not supplying Kaletra to several other low-income countries. The price of $1,000 per year per patient, Abbott says, is 55% less than the average price at which the drug is now sold in the 40 countries. The company says it wants to increase drug affordability while "preserving the system that enables the discovery of new medicines."

Chemtura Gets New Financial Officer

Chemtura has hired Stephen C. Forsyth as executive vice president and chief financial officer, effective April 30, replacing Karen R. Oser, who has retired. The 51-year-old Forsyth was CFO of the structural materials company Hexcel, where he held several positions of responsibility. Hexcel CEO David Burges says, "Stephen has made many significant contributions to Hexcel since joining the company in 1980 in operation, business development, and financial positions. Although Stephen will be missed, we are pleased that Chemtura has recognized his abilities."

Nanomaterials Advance To Market

Texas-based Zyvex has created a new company, Zyvex Performance Materials, to commercialize its NanoSolve materials. These materials include functionalized multi- and single-walled carbon nanotubes, along with nanotube-containing resins and prepolymers. The new company's headquarters will be in Columbus, Ohio, to be close to what the company calls the center of the advanced materials industry. Separately, Nanocor has signed up Sigma-Aldrich as a global distributor of its Nanomer nanoclays. Sigma-Aldrich will sell research quantities of less than 1 kg for use in developing high-strength, flame-retardant, and chemically resistant plastics.

DSM Picks Nova For Rubber Process

DSM will start producing ethylene propylene diene rubber (EPDM) next year with Nova Chemicals' single-site catalyst technology. "This exciting new generation of catalysts allows us to tailor-make specialty EPDMs that offer characteristics that cannot be reached with Ziegler-Natta technology," says DSM Elastomers President Bob Hartmayer. The company says the new elastomers contain high levels of 2-vinyl-5-norbornene as a comonomer and respond well to peroxide curing.

ConocoPhillips Funds Biofuels Research

ConocoPhillips will fund an eight-year, $22.5 million research program at Iowa State University to develop new technologies for producing biofuels from nonedible biomass such as stalks and leaves of corn plants. The Houston-based oil company will make an initial $1.5 million grant in 2007 to support Iowa State researchers and additional annual grants of $3 million for seven years. State officials say ConocoPhillips is especially interested in fast pyrolysis, a process that uses heat in the absence of oxygen to decompose biomass into a liquid fuel.

Lanxess To Spin Off Technical Services

Lanxess is advancing a plan announced last year to spin off its maintenance and technical services division on July 1. The wholly owned but stand-alone unit will be called Aliseca, a name derived from the Latin word "alisequus" meaning "winged servant," the firm says. The spin-off will allow for the more efficient organization of the 800-person division, says Günther Weymans, who currently heads the unit and will become its managing director in July.

Indian Petrochemical Project Moves Ahead

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh attended a ceremony last week to mark the start of construction of a new petrochemical complex in Assam, a poor Indian state northeast of Bangladesh. The $1.3 billion complex, which has been under discussion since 1991, will feature a 220,000-metric-ton-per-year ethylene cracker, a 220,000-metric-ton polyethylene unit, and a 60,000-metric-ton polypropylene plant. It will be 70% owned by the state-run Gas Authority of India. The government says construction will be completed in 2011, but the prime minister sounded tentative about this schedule in his speech, urging those who are managing construction to draw up a calendar to ensure timely completion. "It will boost the morale of all our people if we can actually show them that we too in Assam can deliver on time-bound schedules," he said.

Chemical Jobs Rise Slightly

The Department of Labor reports the U.S. chemical industry had 873,000 employees on a seasonally adjusted basis in March, up by only 100 from February but 7,800 more than in March of last year. Meanwhile, the number of production workers in the industry in March was unchanged from the previous month at 504,700 but up 4,700 from March 2006. These workers put in a slightly longer workweek in March, 41.9 hours compared with 41.7 hours in February. One year earlier, the workweek averaged 42.7 hours. The government's index of aggregate weekly production hours, a product of the number of hourly employees and the hours they work, rose to 94.1 in March (2003 = 100) from 93.6 during the prior month but was down from 96.8 in March 2006.

Pfizer Seeks New Uses For Drugs

Pfizer has signed two pacts aimed at finding new markets for drugs in its pipeline. Caliper Life Sciences will conduct in vivo drug-profiling experiments for compounds in Pfizer's pipeline to determine whether new indications can be pursued for them. Under the one-year contract, Caliper will study the effects of acute or chronic drug dosing in mice. In a separate agreement, Melior Discovery will deploy its in vivo theraTrace indications discovery platform to determine the activity of Pfizer compounds.

MedImmune Is On The Block

MedImmune's directors have authorized management to find out if third parties have an interest in acquiring the Gaithersburg, Md., biotech firm at a price and on terms that would give its stockholders better value than they would receive if it continues on a stand-alone basis. As late as February, the board reaffirmed that the best way to maximize value was to aggressively implement its existing business plan. The company says its latest decision to seek buyers comes on indications of interest by unnamed major pharmaceutical companies coupled with recent expressions of stockholder dissatisfaction with its stock price performance.

Roche, Transgene Sign Vaccine Pact

Roche and French biotechnology company Transgene will collaborate to develop products from Transgene's therapeutic vaccine program against diseases mediated by the human papilloma virus. HPV is associated with the development of precancerous lesions and cancer of the cervix. Under the agreement, Roche will fund worldwide development of TG 4001, Transgene's lead vaccine candidate, which has completed Phase II studies and is in planning for Phase III studies. Transgene will receive $17 million up front and $13 million as a milestone payment related to the Phase III studies. Further payments to Transgene may top $250 million.

Abbott, Wyeth Make Puerto Rican Moves

Abbott Laboratories has opened a new biologics plant in Barceloneta, P.R., that will serve as the primary production site for Humira, a monoclonal antibody for the treatment of arthritis and Crohn's disease. Carrying a $450 million price tag, the plant represents Abbott's largest capital investment to date. The site will also support the commercialization of other products in the company's pipeline. Meanwhile, Wyeth says FDA has completed a reinspection of its manufacturing site in Guayama, P.R., related to a May 2006 warning letter that raised concerns over the facility. The company plans to respond shortly to remaining concerns cited by the agency in the hopes that FDA will give it the nod to start production there. Final approval for Pristiq, Wyeth's drug for manic depressive disorder, hinges on a successful FDA inspection of the Guayama facility.

Business Roundup

Shell will build a 155,000-metric-ton-per-year butadiene extraction unit as part of the petrochemical complex it is building in Singapore for start-up in late 2009. The company says it's already the world's largest butadiene producer.

Sasol will build a second plant in Sasolburg, South Africa, for the solvent methyl isobutyl ketone. Set to open in 2009, the plant will double MIBK output at the site to almost 60,000 tons per year. Global demand for the solvent is about 350,000 tons annually, Sasol says.

SolVin, a Solvay-BASF joint venture, is planning a second plant for polyvinylidene chloride latex, a packaging coating. SolVin currently makes PVDC latex in France; by fall it will decide whether to build a new plant, possibly at Solvay's site in Map Ta Phut, Thailand.

Cambrex will pay a one-time special cash dividend to stockholders of $14.00 per share. The dividend, totaling about $400 million, will be financed by approximately $300 million from the sale of the company's bioproducts and biopharma businesses to Lonza and $100 million in loans. The company also is eliminating its quarterly dividend.

Repligen has licensed compounds from Scripps Research Institute that may have utility in treating Friedreich's ataxia, a neurogenerative disease characterized by low levels of the protein frataxin. Repligen says the compounds may increase production of the protein.

Plextronics has received a $340,500 grant from the Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center to develop Plexcore PV. The polymer-based semiconductive inks boost the efficiency of solar energy cells, the firm says.

Lubrizol has opened a technology and commercial center in São Paulo, Brazil, to serve local personal care products makers. The firm's Carbopol thickening polymers are widely used in products such as shampoos, styling aids, and cleansers.

Pfizer and Renovis have extended their drug discovery and development pact to provide Renovis with research funding through June 2008. The companies are collaborating to develop small molecules that target the vanilloid receptor, which mediates cell signaling. The first drug candidate from the pact is expected to enter human testing this year.

Chemical & Engineering News

ISSN 0009-2347

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