Charles Riv­er Labs, one of the biggest CROs that spe­cial­izes in pre­clin­i­cal re­search pro­grams, has inked a new dis­cov­ery pact as part of a string of deals over the last few years. And af­ter the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic proved less of a fi­nan­cial bur­den than ex­pect­ed, the com­pa­ny could be ready to make even more moves.

Charles Riv­er $CRL pur­chased an­ti­body dis­cov­ery com­pa­ny Dis­trib­uted Bio for up to $104 mil­lion, the com­pa­nies an­nounced Mon­day, a fig­ure that in­cludes $83 mil­lion in up­front cash. The oth­er $21 mil­lion in the deal is re­served for fu­ture “per­for­mance” pay­ments.

With the ac­qui­si­tion, Charles Riv­er hopes to “meet our goal of elim­i­nat­ing an ad­di­tion­al year from our clients’ ear­ly-stage de­vel­op­ment time­lines,” Charles Riv­er CEO James Fos­ter said in a state­ment. Shares ticked up­ward rough­ly 1% in ear­ly Mon­day trad­ing.

The goal of the deal is to give more clients ac­cess to Dis­tri­b­u­tion Bio’s pro­pri­etary plat­form, which is called Su­per­Hu­man. By com­bin­ing an­ti­body li­braries and data­bas­es with a ma­chine learn­ing de­sign, the plat­form can cut the dis­cov­ery process by sev­er­al months, the com­pa­nies said.

Mon­day’s deal al­so marks the for­mal­iza­tion of an ex­clu­sive part­ner­ship the two com­pa­nies struck in Oc­to­ber 2018. Back then, the com­pa­nies had aimed to cre­ate a new plat­form for an­ti­body dis­cov­ery, mar­ry­ing Charles Riv­er’s re­sources with Su­per­Hu­man.

Charles Riv­er has been on an ac­qui­si­tion spree in re­cent years, drop­ping $800 mil­lion for ri­val CRO MPI Re­search in Feb­ru­ary 2018, one of its biggest com­peti­tors in the pre­clin­i­cal sphere. The fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary, the com­pa­ny paid north of half a bil­lion dol­lars to buy out Citoxlab and its slate of non-clin­i­cal ex­perts, beef­ing up tox­i­col­o­gy, dis­cov­ery, ge­nomics and med­ical de­vice test­ing ser­vices while ex­pand­ing its foot­print in Eu­rope.

The CRO had al­so been part­ner­ing with Ei­sai for years in pre­clin­i­cal work, ex­tend­ing a two-year col­lab­o­ra­tion in 2017 for an­oth­er year to work on pre­clin­i­cal med­i­cines for malar­ia.

But the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic halt­ed much of Charles Riv­er’s mo­men­tum, as well as the mo­men­tum of the en­tire CRO in­dus­try, when it forced more than 1,000 clin­i­cal tri­als to hit the pause but­ton in the ear­ly stages of the out­break. Back in May, the CRO re­port­ed that it need­ed to adopt a va­ri­ety of cost-cut­ting mea­sures due to the pan­dem­ic, and ex­pect­ed to chop away $55 mil­lion to $90 mil­lion in 2020 costs.

In sec­ond quar­ter and third quar­ter earn­ings re­ports, how­ev­er, Fos­ter not­ed that the Covid-19 head­winds end­ed up be­ing more mod­er­ate than they’d orig­i­nal­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed. For 2020’s third quar­ter, the com­pa­ny’s rev­enue was up 11.3% over the same time pe­ri­od in 2019.

Charles Riv­er op­er­ates more than 90 fa­cil­i­ties in at least 20 coun­tries and notes it sup­port­ed de­vel­op­ment for about 85% of FDA ap­proved drugs in 2019.

After making it clear that the US’ current monkeypox vaccine supply is insufficient, the FDA on Tuesday authorized a new route of administration that should increase the number of available doses by five-fold.

Regulators cleared Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccine for intradermal injection in adults older than 18. Unlike subcutaneous injection — the current method by which vaccine is delivered under the skin — an intradermal jab goes directly into the skin. It’s believed that this method requires less vaccine, since the dermis is rich in dendritic cells which specialize in taking up foreign antigens and presenting them to the immune system, according to Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Over the past few years, the promise of blocking CD47 — a “don’t eat me” signal co-opted by cancer cells — has sent drugmakers big and small into a frenzy. But one biotech is now bowing out.

Zai Lab is deprioritizing ZL-1201, its CD47 inhibitor, scrapping plans for a Phase II trial. It will now “pursue out-licensing opportunities,” the company said in its Q2 update. The decision was based on a review of the competitive landscape, it added, without going into further details.