The Car­lyle Group is in­vest­ing $260 mil­lion to grab a mi­nor­i­ty stake in Shen­zhen Salu­bris Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, a sto­ried gener­ic mak­er that’s in­creas­ing­ly in­vest­ing in new drug R&D.

The cash is good for a 5% stake in Shen­zhen-list­ed Salu­bris, giv­ing the pri­vate eq­ui­ty play­er ac­cess to a port­fo­lio of treat­ments and de­vices in the car­dio­vas­cu­lar, on­col­o­gy and an­ti-in­fec­tive ar­eas. As the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment’s re­im­burse­ment re­forms spur con­sol­i­da­tion in the gener­ic drug mar­ket, some play­ers are poised to gain mar­ket share, Car­lyle not­ed in a state­ment.

While Salu­bris’ rev­enues have his­tor­i­cal­ly been dri­ven by sales of main­stays like the blood thin­ners clopi­do­grel and bi­valirudin, the com­pa­ny’s been up­ping its bet on ear­ly-stage drug de­vel­op­ment.

That means in-li­cens­ing enar­o­du­s­tat, a hy­pox­ia-in­ducible fac­tor pro­lyl hy­drox­y­lase (HIF-PH) in­hibitor, from Japan’s JT; tak­ing the lead on back­ing Virac­ta, a biotech work­ing on vi­ral-as­so­ci­at­ed can­cers; as well as push­ing through in­ter­nal­ly dis­cov­ered can­di­dates, in­clud­ing an an­giotensin re­cep­tor-NEP in­hibitor and a re­com­bi­nant fu­sion pro­tein for heart fail­ure.

Lever­ag­ing Car­lyle’s ex­per­tise, net­work and re­sources, Salu­bris says it is look­ing to ex­pand both do­mes­ti­cal­ly and glob­al­ly — with plans to do more tri­als over­seas. M&A is al­so on the ta­ble.

For Car­lyle, it’s a chance to tap in­to “one of the strongest fran­chis­es” in the car­dio- and cere­brovas­cu­lar (CCV) seg­ment in Chi­na, said Ling Yang, a man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Car­lyle Asia Buy­out ad­vi­so­ry team. Salu­bris is now the sec­ond largest do­mes­tic com­pa­ny in the space, ac­cord­ing to Car­lyle.

The firm boasts of long-stand­ing op­er­a­tions in Chi­na built over 20 years, in­vest­ing more than $9.5 bil­lion worth of eq­ui­ty as it en­tered the sec­ond half of 2020.

More promi­nent in its Chi­na deal streak are the in­vest­ments in the pep­tide API man­u­fac­tur­er Am­bio and the clin­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry Adi­con, among oth­er moves in medtech and health­care.

Glob­al­ly, Car­lyle — which has re­cruit­ed re­tired Pfiz­er chief Ian Read to be a deal scout — has been known for its role as a ma­jor in­vestor in con­tract re­search or de­vel­op­ment/man­u­fac­tur­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions, in­clud­ing PPD and AM­RI. Most re­cent­ly it struck a deal with In­dia’s Pi­ra­mal Phar­ma to pur­chase around 20% of its shares for $490 mil­lion.

While falling behind the biggest PD-(L)1 drugs in terms of sales, Roche has looked to carve out a space for its Tecentriq with a growing expertise in lung cancer. The drug will now take an early lead in the sought-after adjuvant setting — but competitors are on the way.

The FDA on Friday approved Tecentriq as an adjuvant therapy for patients with Stage II-IIIA non small cell lung cancer with PD-(L)1 scores greater than or equal to 1, making it the first drug of its kind approved in an early setting that covers around 40% of all NSCLC patients.

About five years ago, Amit Etkin had a breakthrough.

The Stanford neurologist, a soft-spoken demi-prodigy who became a professor while still a resident, had been obsessed for a decade with how to better define psychiatric disorders. Drugs for depression or bipolar disorder didn’t work for many patients with the conditions, and he suspected the reason was how traditional diagnoses didn’t actually get at the heart of what was going on in a patient’s brain.

One of Bob Nelsen’s latest projects is headed to Harvard.

Resilience, a company started with the goal of establishing itself as a “one-stop-shop” for companies looking to scale manufacturing, including for hard-to-develop cell and gene therapies, is less than a year old. Friday, it announced a five-year R&D deal with Harvard University that includes $30 million to develop biologics, including vaccines, nucleic acids and cell and gene therapies.