Two industrial biotech companies announced significant equity investments to support ongoing renewable fuels and chemicals projects. In Massachusetts, Myriant Technologies closed a $60 million strategic equity investment from PTT Chemical Group, Thailand’s largest petrochemical producer.

Myriant focuses on bio-based high-value chemicals. The funding will be used to further develop its technology and commercialize its succinic acid platform, including construction of a succinic acid plant in Lake Providence, Louisiana, which will be the world’s largest when completed.

Myriant and PTT Chemical also signed an agreement to establish a joint venture to deploy Myriant's technology in Southeast Asia. The joint venture will combine PTT Chemical's R&D capabilities and Myriant’s technology to manufacture green chemicals using the abundant high quality bio-based feedstock available in Thailand and the Asian region.

Construction of Myriant’s bio-based succinic acid production plant is slated to begin soon. Louisiana that will be the world's largest. Succinic acid has been recognized as one of the most promising biochemicals that can be produced from renewable feedstocks to replace a wide range of petroleum-based chemicals.

California-based Fulcrum BioEnergy raised $75 million in a series C financing to fund its Sierra biofuels plant in northern Nevada. It will be a commercial-scale production facility that will convert municipal solid waste into ethanol, electricity, and other high value chemical products. Fulcrum expects to begin construction this summer and the plant should be up and running in late 2012.

Fulcrum BioEnergy and Myriant weren’t the only privately held bio-based renewables companies with good news. After a slow start, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has started to grant loan guarantees under the 2008 Farm Bill Biorefinery Assistance Program. Coskata was notified by the USDA of their intent to provide a $250 million loan guarantee in support of a commercial biorefinery to produce cellulosic ethanol and chemical by-products in Alabama. Coskata’s technology can produce fuel-grade ethanol from any feedstock.

Canadian biofuel company Enerkem received a loan guarantee of $80 million for the construction of its waste-to-biofuels project in Mississippi. This is on top of a $50 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy announced in late 2009 for this facility. Enerkem also received more than $50 million in a financing round that included a strategic investment by Waste Management, one of the largest waste handlers in the United States.

Massachusetts-based RainDance Technologies closed a series D financing round of $37.5 million that was co-led by new investor Quaker BioVentures and existing investor Mohr Davidow Ventures. Existing investors Alloy Ventures and Acadia Woods also participated in the financing round.

RainDance provides microdroplet-based solutions for single molecule and single cell analysis. The technology is used to do biological analysis in several disease areas including cancer, infectious disease, immunology and genetic screening. It will use the funding to drive new applications for its commercial targeted sequencing and sequence enrichment solution in the medical genetics and research markets, as well as grow its global sales and support infrastructure.

Amgen’s acquisition of privately held BioVex for up to $1 billion was the biggest disclosed deal this week. Amgen will pay $425 million in cash and up to $575 million in milestones for the Massachusetts-based developer of a cancer vaccine in late stage development for the treatment of melanoma and head and neck cancer [see story].

Novartis will acquire San Diego-based diagnostics company Genoptix for $470 million.
Novartis will begin an all cash tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Genoptix at $25 per share, representing a premium of 39 percent over Genoptix' unaffected closing share price of $17.98 on December 13, 2010 and a 27 percent premium over the closing price of $19.76 on January 21, 2011. Genoptix’ board of directors has unanimously agreed to the merger and all the directors and management have agreed to tender their shares in the offer. Based on the successful tender of a majority of shares, the transaction is expected to close within the first half of 2011.

Finally, Germany’s Bayer HealthCare, a unit of Bayer, and India’s Cadila Healthcare are forming a 50/50 joint venture—Bayer Zydus Pharma—to market women’s drugs and oncology products in India. Cadila will contribute its healthcare drugs and diagnostic imaging and other products to the new venture, which will also source Bayer's existing products in India. The JV will also focus on sales and marketing of future patented pipeline of drugs. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.