One day af­ter Hong Kong’s stock ex­change scored its first pre-rev­enue IPO ap­pli­ca­tion, Shang­hai Stock Ex­change got its own time in the lime­light as glob­al CRO WuXi AppTec hauled in $354 mil­lion (RMB2.3 bil­lion) by go­ing pub­lic in Shang­hai.

While the fi­nal amount fell short of the $900 mil­lion cit­ed in its fil­ing, WuXi’s shares shot up im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter they be­came avail­able, surg­ing 44% to $4.89 (RMB31.1) from the IPO price of RMB21.6 — hit­ting the Shang­hai’s dai­ly in­crease ceil­ing for new­ly list­ed shares.

Mon­ey is flow­ing in and out of Chi­na, and it’s touch­ing every part of the ecosys­tem. To­day, a Chi­nese CRO spe­cial­iz­ing in an­i­mal mod­els for gene edit­ing and tar­get­ing spread the word that it has reaped a $65 mil­lion Se­ries C round led by do­mes­tic in­vestors.

Bio­cy­to­gen says the pro­ceeds will go to­ward open­ing up mar­kets both in Chi­na and over­seas, prod­uct R&D, fa­cil­i­ty con­struc­tion and tal­ent re­cruit­ment. CMB In­ter­na­tion­al Cap­i­tal Cor­po­ra­tion, the fi­nan­cial arm of Chi­na Mer­chants Bank, led the round, with sup­port from ex­ist­ing in­vestors like SDIC Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment (Se­ries B lead), 3E Bioven­tures, Cowin Cap­i­tal and Oriza Hold­ings.

In a sign that it’s dou­bling-down on the con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing and de­vel­op­ment busi­ness, Japan’s Fu­ji­film is pay­ing $800 mil­lion to ac­quire two com­pa­nies spe­cial­iz­ing in cell cul­ture me­dia.

Both com­pa­nies, Irvine Sci­en­tif­ic Sales Com­pa­ny (IS­US) and IS Japan (ISJ), were pre­vi­ous­ly owned by Japan­ese pe­tro­le­um gi­ant JXTG. Cell ther­a­pies, in­clud­ing CAR-T and re­gen­er­a­tive stem cell ther­a­pies, will be a key fo­cus, Fu­ji­film writes in a de­tailed state­ment map­ping out its plans.

Top-10 CRO Parex­el is bring­ing in an ex­pe­ri­enced hand to take the helm.

Co-founder Josef von Rick­en­bach — a fa­mil­iar face in the out­sourc­ing world — is step­ping up to con­cen­trate on the chair­man’s spot af­ter guid­ing the com­pa­ny for the past 35 years. And he’s be­ing re­placed in the CEO suite by Jamie Mac­don­ald, who not so long ago head­ed INC Re­search be­fore its merg­er with in­Ven­tiv and re­brand­ing as Sy­neos.

The on­go­ing con­sol­i­da­tion of the CRO busi­ness is con­tin­u­ing this morn­ing as Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries $CRL wraps up an $800 mil­lion cash deal to ac­quire MPI Re­search, one of its biggest com­peti­tors in the pre­clin­i­cal sphere.

The ear­ly-stage spe­cial­ists at Charles Riv­er saw a sweet line­up of dis­cov­ery ser­vices at the 25-year-old MPI that fits with its own mis­sion in the in­dus­try.

Charles Riv­er is a buy­er in the CRO world. Just weeks ago it ac­quired KWS BioTest and its in vi­vo and in vit­ro dis­cov­ery ser­vices for £15 mil­lion (rough­ly $20 mil­lion) up front. And it’s been wrack­ing up a long string of ac­qui­si­tions over the past few years as top play­ers con­tin­ue to carve out mar­ket share.

Two vet­er­ans in this busi­ness — the for­mer Mer­ri­mack CEO and the ex-CMO of Ser­agon — have launched a new can­cer start­up that’s built on an in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar busi­ness mod­el in biotech: fill the C-suite first, then the pipeline.

The new ven­ture is called Part­ner Ther­a­peu­tics, or PTx, and it’s led by Robert Mul­roy, who re­signed as Mer­ri­mack’s CEO in Oc­to­ber 2016. Al­so at the helm is De­ba­sish Roy­chowd­hury, who’s serv­ing as PTx’s CMO. You might re­mem­ber Roy­chowd­hury from his time as CMO of Ser­agon Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, the com­pa­ny Roche/Genen­tech ac­quired for $725 mil­lion back in 2014. But Roy­chowd­hury al­so has a long re­sume in phar­ma, pre­vi­ous­ly serv­ing as clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment VP at GSK, head­ing Sanofi’s on­col­o­gy unit, and lead­ing the glob­al on­col­o­gy reg­u­la­to­ry group at Eli Lil­ly.

In a move to ex­pand its dis­cov­ery en­ter­prise, Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries $CRL has ac­quired KWS BioTest for £15 mil­lion (rough­ly $20 mil­lion) up front.

A provider of both in vi­vo and in vit­ro dis­cov­ery ser­vices, KWS’ spe­cial­i­ty spans im­muno-on­col­o­gy and in­flam­ma­to­ry and in­fec­tious dis­ease, al­low­ing Charles Riv­er to fur­ther tap in­to the hot ar­eas of on­col­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy. The small­er com­pa­ny’s UK base al­so helps Charles Riv­er — head­quar­tered in Wilm­ing­ton, MA — reach that area.

Re­mem­ber the head-turn­ing $7.4 bil­lion merg­er be­tween INC Re­search and in­Ven­tiv Health last May? Scrap those names, be­cause the com­pa­ny just un­veiled their new name to­day: Sy­neos Health.

In their for­mer lives, INC was a clin­i­cal-fo­cused or­ga­ni­za­tion head­quar­tered in Raleigh, NC while Boston-based in­Ven­tiv spe­cial­ized on the com­mer­cial­iza­tion side. Ac­cord­ing to the CRO, their new brand em­bod­ies the “syn­chro­niz­ing” of those ca­pa­bil­i­ties as well as a “new ap­proach to prob­lem-solv­ing.”

When XO1 was bought out by J&J a cou­ple of years ago, the seed in­vestors at In­dex, now Medicxi, made it Ex­hib­it A for their busi­ness mod­el on cre­at­ing a port­fo­lio of as­set-based biotechs.

What start­ed off with a bit of sci­en­tif­ic sleuthing by a pair of re­searchers at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty — Trevor Baglin and Jim Hunt­ing­ton — led to an an­ti­body pro­gram for a drug dubbed ichor­cum­ab that promised to po­ten­tial­ly act as an an­ti­co­ag­u­lant, with­out the in­her­ent risk of se­vere bleed­ing that in­evitably haunts the class.

A study pub­lished in JA­MA In­ter­nal Med­i­cine on Mon­day was able to repli­cate the re­sults of a large ran­dom­ized con­trolled clin­i­cal tri­al for the blood pres­sure drug telmis­ar­tan us­ing so-called re­al world ev­i­dence gath­ered from in­sur­ance claims da­ta.

The goal of the study, which was con­duct­ed by re­searchers at Har­vard Med­ical School, was to in­ves­ti­gate whether health care data­bas­es can be used to con­firm find­ings from clin­i­cal tri­als con­duct­ed to sup­port ad­di­tion­al in­di­ca­tions for al­ready ap­proved drugs.