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.

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”

Bayer and Exscientia are winding down their three-year collaboration, leaving the big German pharma to take the AI-designed compounds born out of the pact further.

London-based Exscientia revealed in its Q2 update that the partners have “mutually agreed to end” their collaboration, which kicked off in early 2020, after recently achieving a drug discovery milestone. In an SEC filing, Exscientia said it terminated the pact on May 30, about six months early.