Ever­est Med­i­cines is on a roll with two li­cens­ing deals in one week.

The Shang­hai-based biotech has paid Sinovent and SinoMab $12 mil­lion up­front for the rights to a BTK in­hibitor for re­nal dis­eases, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Thurs­day. The deal comes just days af­ter Ever­est came away with rights to a Covid-19 vac­cine in Chi­na, Tai­wan, Sin­ga­pore, Thai­land and In­done­sia.

Ever­est will pay Sinovent and SinoMab up to $549 mil­lion in mile­stone pay­ments and roy­al­ties. The agree­ment in­cludes tech trans­fer of Sinovent and SinoMab’s man­u­fac­tur­ing process for the can­di­date, named XNW1011.

The BTK in­hibitor has fin­ished a Phase I study in Chi­na so far. Chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease, Ever­est CEO Ker­ry Blan­chard said in a press re­lease, is a prob­lem world­wide, and B cell ab­nor­mal­i­ties can af­fect a num­ber of dis­eases that have a high preva­lence in Asia.

“We are im­pressed by the da­ta gen­er­at­ed from XNW1011 (or “SN1011″) to date and are com­mit­ted to mov­ing this com­pound quick­ly in­to phase 2 stud­ies to ex­plore a num­ber of re­nal dis­eases, of which rep­re­sent a few glob­al first-in-dis­ease op­por­tu­ni­ties for Ever­est,” he said. “This im­por­tant part­ner­ship with Sinovent and SinoMab not on­ly so­lid­i­fies Ever­est’s lead­er­ship in de­vel­op­ing nov­el ther­a­pies to com­bat re­nal dis­ease, but al­so un­der­scores our tran­si­tion to de­vel­op­ing nov­el ther­a­pies for the glob­al mar­ket by lever­ag­ing the vast pa­tient pop­u­la­tion in Greater Chi­na and Asia.”

This week, the com­pa­ny paid $100 mil­lion up­front to Prov­i­dence Ther­a­peu­tics, and could pay up to $400 mil­lion more for its mR­NA-based Covid-19 vac­cine. Ever­est will al­so gain the rights to any fu­ture Covid-19 vac­cine can­di­dates that are de­signed for a spe­cif­ic vari­ant, which are cur­rent­ly in the pre­clin­i­cal stage.

Aside from XNW1011, Ever­est has two drugs in its pipeline for car­dio-re­nal dis­ease: Ne­fe­con for the treat­ment of IgA nephropa­thy, and Ra­linepag for pul­monary ar­te­r­i­al hy­per­ten­sion. In to­tal, there are nine can­di­dates in the com­pa­ny’s pipeline, sev­en of which are ei­ther in Phase III tri­als or have a bi­o­log­ics li­cense agree­ment sub­mit­ted.

SinoMab’s flag­ship can­di­date SMO3 tar­gets CD22 to treat rheuma­toid arthri­tis, and is cur­rent­ly in Phase III tri­als in Chi­na. Sinovent’s fo­cus area is in on­col­o­gy, and meta­bol­ic and in­fec­tious dis­eases.

Fenlai Tan still gets chills thinking about the darkest day of his life.

Three out of eight lung cancer patients who received a tyrosine kinase inhibitor developed by his company, Betta Pharma, died in the span of a month. Tan, the chief medical officer, was summoned to Peking Union Medical College Hospital, where the head of the clinical trial department told him that the trial investigators would be conducting an autopsy to see if the patients had died of the disease — they were all very sick by the time they enrolled — or of interstitial lung disease, a deadly side effect tied to the TKI class that’s been reported in Japan.

BioNTech’s first mRNA-based vaccine site in Africa will call Rwanda home, and construction is set to start in mid-2022, the company announced Tuesday at a public health forum.

The German company signed a memorandum of understanding, after a meeting between Rwanda’s Minister of Health, Daniel Ngamije, Senegal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Aïssata Tall Sall, and senior BioNTech officials. Construction plans have been finalized, and assets have been ordered. The agreement will help bring end-to-end manufacturing to Africa, and as many as several hundred million doses of vaccines per year, though initial production will be more modest.

With Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb still dominating the PD-(L)1 space and the threat of lower-cost options coming from behind, is there still room for GlaxoSmithKline’s checkpoint inhibitor — the seventh to market — to make billions? For Sagard Healthcare Royalty Partners, the answer is yes.

Sagard has plumped down $250 million in cash to buy out the 8% royalty AnaptysBio owns on Jemperli sales below $1 billion.