When Chi­na’s biggest search en­gine builder for­ays in­to biotech, ex­pect it to move in large strides.

Baidu is re­port­ed­ly scout­ing around for in­vestors to col­lec­tive­ly put $2 bil­lion be­hind a biotech start­up that would lever­age its ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tech­nolo­gies in dis­ease di­ag­no­sis and drug dis­cov­ery — fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Amer­i­can tech gi­ants while join­ing its Chi­nese coun­ter­parts in mak­ing health­care in­vest­ments.

The goal is not to be a con­trol­ling share­hold­er, ac­cord­ing to in­sid­ers who told Reuters about the plan. CN­BC lat­er con­firmed the dis­cus­sions, re­port­ing that the start­up will like­ly be a stand­alone com­pa­ny rather than a sub­sidiary.

CEO Robin Li is per­son­al­ly in­volved in the project, sources said, the idea for which first came about six months ago.

Baidu isn’t com­ing in en­tire­ly un­in­formed. Through its ven­ture arm, it has in­vest­ed in AI star­tups such as Atom­wise and In­sil­i­co, as well as di­ag­nos­tic play­er Po­laris Bi­ol­o­gy and T cell ther­a­py de­vel­op­er Root­Path.

At the peak of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic in Chi­na back in Feb­ru­ary, Baidu al­so open-sourced its RNA pre­dic­tion al­go­rithm Lin­ear­Fold in hopes of help­ing front­line re­searchers bet­ter un­der­stand how SARS-CoV-2 is spread­ing. It promised to re­duce over­all analy­sis time from 55 min­utes to 27 sec­onds, or 120 times faster.

Al­though Al­iba­ba and Ten­cent have backed health­care ven­tures, they have his­tor­i­cal­ly fo­cused on telemed­i­cine, med­ical im­age analy­sis, drug dis­tri­b­u­tion and even in­sur­ance, aid­ing R&D on­ly in­di­rect­ly through their tools.

In con­trast, Google par­ent Al­pha­bet has launched a whole sub­sidiary — Ver­i­ly — ded­i­cat­ed to life sci­ence re­search. Google it­self has al­lied with Sanofi in a pact sim­i­lar to what Mi­crosoft inked with No­var­tis, where the tech ti­tans lend their com­pu­ta­tion­al pow­ers to solve the phar­ma gi­ants’ most press­ing chal­lenges.

But the pan­dem­ic has ev­i­dent­ly pushed bio­phar­ma to the top of Chi­nese tech ex­ec­u­tives’ agen­das. Ten­cent launched its own AI drug dis­cov­ery plat­form in Ju­ly called iDrug, and Baidu an­nounced one month lat­er that it will be open­ing up two new labs fo­cused on bio­sta­tis­tics and biosafe­ty.

The yet-to-be-named new start­up is ex­pect­ed to ma­te­ri­al­ize with­in the next three years.

Several countries had restarted their portions of AstraZeneca’s global Phase III Covid-19 vaccine trial after the study was paused worldwide in early September, but the US notably stayed on the sidelines — until now. Friday afternoon the pharma giant announced the all clear from US regulators. And on top of that, J&J announced Friday evening that it’s preparing to resume its own Phase III vaccine trial.

Since before Ilan Ganot started Solid Bio to develop a gene therapy for kids like his son, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Ultragenyx CEO Emil Kakkis has been watching and advising the former investment banker as he navigated the deep waters of drug development.

Just as Solid is getting back up on its feet after a yearlong clinical hold, Kakkis has decided to jump in for a formal alliance.

With a $40 million upfront, Ultragenyx is grabbing 14.45% of Solid’s shares $SLDB and the rights to its microdystrophin construct for use in combination with AAV8 vectors. Solid’s lead program, which utilizes AAV9, remains unaffected. The company also retains rights to other applications of its transgene.

Adam Koppel and Jeffrey Schwartz have jumped into the blank check game, raising $125 million for a stock listing in search of a company.

Their SPAC, BCLS Acquisition Corp, raised $125 million this week, with a line on $25 million more as it scouts for a biotech in search of money and a place on Wall Street.

The two principals at Bain Life Sciences have been on a romp since they set up the Bain operation 4 years ago. Their S-1 spells out a track record of 22 deals totaling $650 million for the life sciences group, which led to 9 IPOs.

The big tell for CureVac $CVAC is coming up with a looming early-stage readout on their mRNA Covid-19 vaccine in the clinic. But for now they’ll make do with an upbeat assessment on the preclinical animal data they used to get into the clinic.

Researchers for the German biotech say they got the high antibody titers and T cell activation they were looking for, lining up a hamster challenge to demonstrate — in a simple model — that the vaccine could protect the furry creatures. Like the other mRNA vaccines, the drug sends instructions to spur cells to decorate themselves with the distinctive spike on the virus to elicit an immune response.