company funds universe hybridoma research
TRANSCRIPT
News of the Week
GROWTH OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT SLOWING Pace of U.S. chemical investment abroad cools somewhat, but so does foreign
$ Millions
U.S. DIRECT All areas
Petroleum
Chemicals
Europe Petroleum
Chemicals
Canada Petroleum
Chemicals
Latin America Petroleum
Chemicals
investment here
Cumulative investment at year's end
1980
INVESTMENT $213,468
46,920
19,044
95,686
19,924
9,695
44,640
10,573 3,382
38,275 4,336
3,586
FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN
Total
Petroleum
Chemicals
65,483
12,253
7,859
1979
ABROAD $186,760
38,744
16,878
82,622
17,755
8,646
40,243 8,648
2,966
35,056
3,948 3,081
U.S. 54,462
9,906
7,212
Outflow3
1980
$1548 - 2 7 5 7
1924
4962 - 1 0 1
1005
370 518
416
- 6 9 1
96
464
4664
- 3 2 4
464
1979
$4984 3120
2873
1225 523
1879
1035 156
402
270
58
295
7921
- 4 9 9
730
Reinvested earnings'3
1980
$16,998 4,553
1,856 7,821
2,251
1,002
3,490 1,389
305
3,347
288
370
6,190 2,671
183
1979 I
$18,964 5,414
2,083
10,627 2,884
1,338
3,003 1,052
289
2,924
788
224
3,955 1,645
380
a Equity and intercompany accounts from country in which parent company is headquartered, b For corporate affiliates. Note: Negative number means net inflow to U.S. for U.S. investment abroad and to foreign country in foreign investment in U.S.
The recession last year in the U.S. and abroad took its toll on both investment by U.S. chemical firms overseas and foreign investment in U.S. chemicals. Both were up, but not nearly so much as they had been in 1979, according to statistics published by the Commerce Department.
According to a Commerce Department spokesman, U.S. chemical investment abroad at the end of 1980 amounted to $19.0 billion, a 12.8% increase from year-end 1979, which had been up 18.5% from 1978.
Again, the biggest investment was in Europe at $9.7 billion. However, Europe, with a 12.1% increase in investment, was not the biggest gainer. Latin American investment at the end of the year was $3.6 billion, up 16.4% from 1979. Canada also was growing faster than Europe in terms of U.S. chemical investment. Investment of U.S. companies in Canadian chemicals at year's end totaled $3.4 billion, an increase of 14.0% over year-end 1979.
While investment abroad in chemicals was increasing 12.8% last year, foreign companies' investment in U.S. chemicals was increasing only 9.8%. Foreign investment in U.S. chemicals at the close of 1980 totaled $7.9 billion, compared with $7.2 billion at year-end 1979. This rate of increase is less than half the 18.3% increase from 1978 to 1979.
Net direct investment outflows from the U.S. for chemical investment exceeded the net direct investment inflow into the U.S. by foreign companies by more than four to one last year.
Outflows from the U.S. for direct chemical investment were $1.9 billion last year, compared with inflows into the U.S. by foreign companies of just $464 million. However, in spite of the big lead over inflows from foreign firms, outflows by U.S. investors were down 33.0% in 1980 from almost $2.9 billion in 1979. Outflows in 1980 were larger in only two areas—Latin America and Canada—than they had been in 1979. U.S. firms sent $464 million to Latin America for chemical investment last year, a 57.2% increase over outflows to that area in 1979. Outflows from the U.S. to Canada rose 3.5% to $416 million from $402 million in 1979.
By contrast, outflows to Europe
last year were a little more than $1 billion, a 46.5% drop from outflows of almost $1.9 billion the year before.
Inflows from foreign sources to U.S. chemicals last year were $464 million, down 36.4% from 1979. Inasmuch as European companies are the largest foreign investors in U.S. chemicals, the sluggish European economy undoubtedly played a part in the lower rate of investment last year.
Reinvested earnings at U.S. firms' foreign chemical operations generally followed the pattern set by outflows. Reinvested earnings abroad in 1980
Company funds universe Mallinckrodt Inc. and Washington University, both in St. Louis, have entered an agreement whereby the company will support research into hybridoma technology. Calling this the "largest single university-industry agreement" to support such research in the U.S., the two parties announced that the company will provide more than $3.88 million to the university during the next three years.
The research arm of the program
fell 10.9% to almost $1.9 billion from the previous year. Once again, Europe was the loser with a 25% decline to $1.0 billion from 1979. Canada and Latin America again gained. Reinvested earnings in Canada were up 5.5% over 1979 to $305 million. And in Latin America, reinvested earnings increased a whopping 64.2% to $370 million from the year before.
Reinvested earnings by foreign companies in U.S. chemical operations dropped sharply last year. Reinvested earnings were just $183 million, down 51.8% from 1979. D
hybridoma research will be guided by Joseph Davie, who is head of the department of microbiology and immunology in the university's school of medicine. Members of other departments, including pathology and internal medicine, also will be part of this joint venture.
According to the agreement, Washington University scientists will remain free to publish their research findings in the scientific literature and they also will be allowed to exchange materials, such as cell lines,
8 C&EN Sept. 7, 1981
with their peers. Meanwhile, Mal-linckrodt retains the option to license developments that come out of the sponsored research, and the company will pay a royalty to the university from resulting revenues.
Hybridoma research represents another aspect, besides recombinant DNA research, of the current boom in biotechnology. Hybridoma research involves the fusion of mammalian cells, which are grown in large quantities to produce useful materials such as antibodies. The most advanced hybridoma work so far, and the work that already has begun to realize some of its commercial potential, consists of monoclonal antibody production.
Monoclonal antibodies derive from fused cells that can produce virtually limitless quantities of a single type of antibody molecule. Such antibodies
can be used for a variety of purposes, but their major early commercial use is and will be in diagnostic kits for clinical and veterinary tests. Monoclonal antibodies also are being tested, so far in very limited fashion only, as vehicles for delivering drugs to specific tissues to treat diseases there.
The new agreement is described by Mallinckrodt as a "logical extension of its plans for growth in the field of health care and particularly diagnostic medicine. On a long-term basis, the research will have application in the company's present business in both clinical and imaging diagnos-tics." The agreement also will help put the company into a position to compete directly with the group of new companies set up during the past few years expressly for exploiting hybridoma technology. D
Mary Good elected IUPAC division president U.S. chemist Mary L. Good has been elected president of the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry's inorganic chemistry division. The voting took place last week during IUPAC's general assembly, held in Leuven, Belgium.
Late last year, Good was appointed vice president and director of research at UOP Inc., Des Plaines, 111., where she manages all centralized research activity for the corporation. Prior to that she had been Boyd Professor of material science in the division of engineering research at Louisiana State University. Her many activities in the American Chemical Society include chairing the board of directors in 1978.
During her four-year term of office, she will be responsible for overseeing the inorganic chemistry division and the work of its three commissions. The oldest of these is the commission on nomenclature of inorganic chemistry, now in its 60th year. The others are the commission on atomic weights and isotopic abundances, set up in its present form in 1979, and the commission on high temperatures and refractory materials established in 1951.
'One of the most important tasks is to rewrite the old IUPAC inorganic chemistry nomenclature book, the so-called 'Red Book,' " Good notes. "It will bring all the inorganic nomenclature up to date in one volume. We should move it as quickly as it can be done accurately." The task already is in hand. Good hopes it will be finished in two years.
In the area of high temperatures and refractories, Good would like to expand the definition to embrace the broader one of solid-state and high-temperature metals. "We now are doing some very nice work on high-temperature thermodynamics and thermochemistry," she observes. "I would like to go on to the complex metal oxides with their catalyst implications."
For Good, as well as IUPAC, the election was a first. She is the first woman to be elevated to such a rank in that essentially all-male organization. Good already holds the distinction of being the first woman to head the ACS Board of Directors. D
Good: move quickly and accurately
Lab prepares for powerful new laser The old began to give way to the new last week in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's laser fusion program. Workers at the California lab began dismantling the lab's five-year-old Argus fusion laser, in preparation for replacing it with the first two beams of the much more powerful Nova laser.
The Argus laser was the third in a sequence of powerfully pulsed neo-dymium/glass lasers at LLNL. It was rated at 2000 joules and 2 to 5 trillion watts.
The two Nova beams are called Novette and will be able to deliver 20,000 joules of infrared light (or 15,000 joules of green light) in a pulse of 3 billionths of a second. In pulses shorter than a billionth of a second, Novette has a power rating of up to 20 trillion watts. LLNL's currently most powerful fusion laser is the 20-arm Shiva, fourth in the series of lasers, rated at 15,000 joules and 26 trillion watts.
Novette is scheduled to be operational in late 1982. The full Nova system is scheduled to begin experiments in 1985. The system will be housed in the building (along with an adjoining new building) that now contains Shiva, which will be decommissioned in early 1982.
"Using Novette," says Nova project manager Bob Godwin, "we can verify the engineering design and performance of the Nova components, while continuing to perform useful fusion experiments."
The full Nova system will be rated at 200,000 to 300,000 joules and 200 to 300 trillion watts, depending on the color of the light. Low-energy experiments at 200 joules have indicated that shorter wavelength light is more effective than infrared in compressing and heating the fusion fuel in the targets. The infrared light of Novette will be convertible for experiments into shorter wavelength green or ultraviolet light by placing special crystals at the end of each of the two arms.
The idea behind laser fusion is to heat the outside of a deuterium-tritium fuel pellet with extremely powerful pulses of energy, causing the surface to explode outward. The resulting opposite reaction drives the remaining target mass inward, compressing and heating the fuel, while inertia confines the fuel long enough for ignition and rapid thermonuclear burn. D
Sept. 7, 1981 C&EN 9