Chi­na’s cost ad­van­tage and po­si­tion as the world’s sec­ond-largest pre­scrip­tion drug mar­ket has fu­eled its red-hot CRO in­dus­try over the last few years. On Thurs­day, Shang­hai-based dMed Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal wrapped up a $100 mil­lion Se­ries C round, which it says will blaze the path to an IPO.

Found­ed in 2016 by Ling­shi Tan, Pfiz­er’s for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er of Chi­na R&D, dMed boasts sites in ma­jor cities across Chi­na, the US, and one lo­ca­tion in Bel­gium. It hooked a $50 mil­lion Se­ries B just last year, and opened a US reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs of­fice in DC to help Chi­nese biotechs sub­mit US fil­ings and serve as a con­duit for US drug­mak­ers look­ing to out­source de­vel­op­ment to Chi­na.

“A key goal in the cur­rent round is to ex­pand our in­vestor base to in­clude long-term pub­lic mar­ket-fo­cused in­sti­tu­tions and strate­gic part­ners in or­der to pre­pare for a fu­ture IPO,” Tan said in a state­ment.

Fi­deli­ty Man­age­ment & Re­search led the Se­ries C, with a help­ing hand from new in­vestors Se­quoia Cap­i­tal Chi­na, Kaiser Foun­da­tion Hos­pi­tals and E Fund.

Chi­na’s CRO mar­ket is ex­pect­ed to hit $27.04 bil­lion in 2024, ex­pand­ing at a com­pound an­nu­al growth rate of 27.06%, ac­cord­ing to a Kon­cept An­a­lyt­ics re­port pub­lished ear­li­er this year. Sev­er­al fac­tors are con­tribut­ing to the growth, the re­port states, in­clud­ing in­creas­ing bi­o­log­ics sales, ris­ing geri­atric pop­u­la­tion, grow­ing in­vest­ment in the health­care sec­tor, an ac­cel­er­at­ing num­ber of IND fil­ings, in­clin­ing R&D ex­pen­di­tures and un­met need.

“Dur­ing pre­vi­ous years, the CRO in­dus­try has grown from lim­it­ed clin­i­cal tri­al ser­vices provider to a full-ser­vice in­dus­try char­ac­ter­ized by broad re­la­tion­ships with clients and ser­vice of­fer­ings that en­com­pass the en­tire drug de­vel­op­ment process,” the re­port reads.

In 2017, sweep­ing reg­u­la­to­ry re­forms more close­ly aligned Chi­na’s rules with those in the US and Eu­rope, re­sult­ing in an in­flux of ap­pli­ca­tions from Chi­nese biotechs to reg­is­ter drugs in the US, ac­cord­ing to dMed. Chi­na joined the In­ter­na­tion­al Coun­cil for Har­mon­i­sa­tion of Tech­ni­cal Re­quire­ments for Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for Hu­man Use (ICH), an or­ga­ni­za­tion that brings to­geth­er reg­u­la­tors of the bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try glob­al­ly to as­sess the sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal as­pects of drug de­vel­op­ment. IND fil­ings jumped from 11 in 2016 to 20 in 2017, with an­oth­er 38 in 2018 and the first quar­ter of this year, dMed an­nounced.

“Chi­na is vast­ly dif­fer­ent than two years ago. Gov­ern­ment re­forms and join­ing the ICH have helped clear the way for in­no­v­a­tive Chi­nese com­pa­nies to de­vel­op and launch cut­ting-edge ther­a­pies glob­al­ly,” Tan said last year, up­on an­nounc­ing the DC of­fice. “A key part of dMed’s mis­sion is to sup­port the glob­al­iza­tion of drug de­vel­op­ment and help build world-class clin­i­cal, reg­u­la­to­ry, bio­met­rics and phar­ma­covig­i­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ties in Chi­na.”

Although Thursday’s Senate health committee hearing was focused on how foreign countries and adversaries might be trying to steal or negatively influence biomedical research in the US, the only country mentioned by the senators and expert witnesses was China.

Committee chair Patty Murray (D-WA) made clear in her opening remarks that the US cannot “let the few instances of bad actors” overshadow the hard work of the many immigrant researchers in the US, many of which have won Nobel prizes for their work. But she also said, “There is more the NIH can be doing here.”

Francesco De Rubertis made no secret of IPO plans for Centessa, his 10-in-1 legacy play. Barely two months later, the S-1 is in.

The hot-off-the-press filing depicts the same grand vision that the longtime VC touted when he did the rounds in February: Take the asset-centric mindset that he’s been preaching at Medicxi over the years, and roll up a bunch of biotech upstarts, with unrelated risk profiles, into 1 pharma company that can carry on the development at scale.

The world of radiopharmaceuticals has been heating up over the last few years, and Thursday saw another company focused on the field pull in a new nine-figure raise.

Germany’s ITM, or Isotopen Technologien München, scored a $109 million round of loan financing to push forward its precision oncology pipeline and fund late-stage development for its lead program. As part of the agreement, the loan will convert to shares in the event of future financial or corporate transactions, ITM said.

As concerns rise around the J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines, global attention is increasingly turning to the little, 33-year-old, productless, bankruptcy-flirting biotech that could: Novavax.

In the now 16-month race to develop and deploy Covid-19 vaccines, Novavax has at times seemed like the pandemic’s most unsuspecting frontrunner and at times like an overhyped also-ran. Although they started the pandemic with only enough cash to last 6 months, they leveraged old connections and believers into $2 billion and emerged last summer with data experts said surpassed Pfizer and Moderna. They unveiled plans to quickly scale to 2 billion doses. Then they couldn’t even make enough material to run their US trial and watched four other companies beat them to the finish line.