Near­ly a year ago, as the pan­dem­ic en­croached and the stock mar­ket cratered, Flag­ship and ARCH Ven­ture an­nounced three mega-funds worth a com­bined $2.6 bil­lion. They want­ed, ARCH’s Bob Nelsen said, to re­store con­fi­dence “that there was mon­ey out there and a lot of it” to in­vest in biotech.

Since then, the stock mar­ket has re­turned — al­most fright­en­ing­ly so — and Nelsen has kept rais­ing and spend­ing cash. On Thurs­day, he an­nounced a new fund, worth $1.85 bil­lion. It’s the largest pot yet for a VC fa­mous for its deep pock­ets.

This time, he said, there’s no mes­sage oth­er than what they’ve been say­ing for years.

“It’s just a con­tin­ued con­fi­dence in ba­sic sci­ence, and in­no­va­tion that’s hap­pen­ing in health­care; it’s re­al­ly a rev­o­lu­tion­ary time,” he told End­points News. It’s “keep­ing your head down and con­tin­u­ing to do what you do.”

His­tor­i­cal­ly, ARCH has been known for back­ing huge plays with record in­vest­ments, most re­cent­ly launch­ing Re­silience with $800 mil­lion and a plan to re­think how all bi­o­log­ic drugs are made. An­oth­er ma­jor bet, the in­fec­tious dis­ease start­up Vir, may yet play a ma­jor role in the pan­dem­ic, lead­ing one of the ma­jor ef­forts to de­vel­op a neu­tral­iz­ing an­ti­body for Covid-19.

In an­nounc­ing the new fund, Nelsen ticked off a range of ar­eas the firm will look to pur­sue, most of which ARCH has pre­vi­ous­ly pushed for­ward, in­clud­ing gene edit­ing and cell ther­a­py.

“Men­tal health is at the top of my mind,” he said.

ARCH has played a key role in pre­vi­ous men­tal health biotechs, most no­tably back­ing Sage Ther­a­peu­tics and Karuna. Nelsen said they may al­so in­vest in ap­proach­es to the is­sue out­side drug de­vel­op­ment, back­ing ef­forts in con­sumer health and health tech.

Al­though known for its huge plays, ARCH al­so hands out about 20 so-called “poor” deals that can range as low as $50,000 and ei­ther pro­vide seed cash for a par­tic­u­lar idea or help feed in­to a larg­er com­pa­ny. Both Vir and Re­silience, for ex­am­ple, com­bined mul­ti­ple small­er com­pa­nies in­to a large one, which then gar­nered sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment.

Not all those in­vest­ments, though, have worked out. Last year, Nelsen stepped away from the board of Uni­ty Biotech­nol­o­gy, an an­ti-ag­ing start­up that at­tract­ed sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment but failed a ma­jor tri­al last year. It’s at least the sec­ond ma­jor set­back he’s seen in an an­ti-ag­ing play, af­ter a late 90s, ear­ly 2000s bet on Cyn­thia Keny­on’s Elixir Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals went un­der.

Still, ARCH in­clud­ed it on a list of po­ten­tial ar­eas for the new fund, and Nelsen said he hasn’t lost faith. They’re con­tin­u­ing to mon­i­tor the field, he said.

Blueprint Medicines announced this morning that the second part of its study on Ayvakit in non-advanced systemic mastocytosis (SM) — a rare disease in which a type of white blood cells known as mast cells builds up — met all endpoints, but the biopharma left key questions unanswered.

In 212 patients, with 141 in the treatment arm and 71 in the control arm, patients who got Ayvakit saw an average 15.6-point decrease in their symptom scores compared to a 9.2-point decrease in the placebo arm at 24 weeks. In an extension study, those on Ayvakit saw their symptom scores drop by 20.2 points by week 48.

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”

As the ink dries on CSL’s $11.7 billion Vifor buyout, the company posted a dip in profits, due in part to a drop in plasma donations amid the pandemic.

However, CEO Paul Perreault assured investors and analysts on the full-year call that the team has left “no stone unturned” when assessing options to grow plasma volumes. The chief executive also spelled out positive results for the company’s monoclonal antibody garadacimab in hereditary angioedema (HAE), though he isn’t revealing the exact numbers just yet.