What does it take to gath­er $200 mil­lion from top VC play­ers in Chi­na these days?

Not much that can be shared pub­licly, D3 Bio sug­gests as it launch­es with the hefty Se­ries A this morn­ing. But the in­gre­di­ents feed­ing in­to the Shang­hai-based as­pir­ing glob­al biotech may be in­dica­tive of things that would turn heads at places like Boyu Cap­i­tal, Ma­trix Part­ners Chi­na, Se­quoia Cap­i­tal Chi­na, Temasek, and WuXi AppTec’s Cor­po­rate Ven­ture Fund.

First, you need a con­nect­ed, sea­soned leader who’s been im­mersed in the ranks of glob­al bio­phar­ma.

D3 Bio co-founder and CEO George Chen put in the years at the NIH, Eli Lil­ly, Glax­o­SmithK­line, and J&J af­ter get­ting an MBA from Penn’s Whar­ton, lend­ing a hand to more than 70 INDs and 30-plus NDAs. He was chief med­ical of­fi­cer at BeiGene for two years be­fore leav­ing to head up As­traZeneca’s on­col­o­gy R&D in Chi­na.

Then it’s all about hit­ting the right themes: “Pre­ci­sion med­i­cine” has a next-gen­er­a­tion ring to it; a fo­cus on im­munol­o­gy and on­col­o­gy puts you in the same league as the big guys; talk of build­ing “back­bone” drugs that can spawn a pipeline and new com­bi­na­tions is al­so key.

Top it all with a busi­ness mod­el that lever­ages Chi­na’s grow­ing tal­ent pool, re­sources and re­search out­put, and you have a win­ning idea.

“As far as we know, D3’s ap­proach is unique,” Chen wrote in an email to End­points News, “we start with in­sights from clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and an as­sess­ment of mar­ket needs and, take those in­sights to the lab to guide the clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment path.”

So rather than start­ing out with new sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies or plat­form tech­nolo­gies, D3 — which stands for de­vel­op­ment, dis­cov­ery, then de­vel­op­ment again — would “sur­vey the clin­i­cal land­scape” to find de­fi­cien­cies in stan­dard-of-care treat­ments. The next step is iden­ti­fy­ing dis­ease tar­gets and de­liv­ery meth­ods that may plug that gap, and they go from there.

“D3 Bio an­tic­i­pates that hav­ing a clear un­der­stand­ing dur­ing pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment both of rel­e­vant can­cer bio­mark­ers and the ther­a­peu­tic im­prove­ment or re­place­ment goals will make drug dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment as ef­fi­cient and fo­cused as pos­si­ble,” reads a press re­lease.

As with BeiGene, the har­bin­ger for a new breed of biotechs root­ed in Chi­na but run­ning on glob­al bio­phar­ma rules, D3 Bio prides it­self on lever­ag­ing what Chen calls an “ad­vanced” R&D sys­tem.

It will in­volve a mix of in­ter­nal dis­cov­ery and in-li­cens­ing deals for ear­ly-stage as­sets, Chen added — some­what dis­tinct from bring­ing in late-stage pro­grams for a quick flip to the mar­ket, an ap­proach that’s gained re­newed mo­men­tum. The Se­ries A should sus­tain the com­pa­ny for a few years as it cre­ates and push­es for­ward the pipeline.

So what kinds of drugs, dis­eases and pace should we ex­pect from D3 Bio?

“Stay tuned – D3 will be shar­ing specifics about its pipeline at the ap­pro­pri­ate time,” Chen wrote.

The first time San Diego biotech Ambrx tried to go public in 2014, they failed and the company’s board switched to a radically different strategy: They sold themselves for an undisclosed amount to a syndicate of Chinese investors and pharma companies.

Now, after 5 quiet years, that syndicate has raised a mountain of cash and indicated they’ll soon make another bid to go public.

Earlier this month, Ambrx raised $200 million in what they billed as a crossover round financed by Fidelity, BlackRock, Cormorant Asset Management, HBM Healthcare Investments, Invus, Adage Capital Partners and Suvretta Capital Management. It’s the largest amount they’ve ever raised and, according to Crunchbase figures, more than doubles the total amount of VC capital collected since their launch 17 years ago.

As biotechs look to get clinical studies back on track amid the pandemic, Medable returned to the venture well for the second time this year, bagging a $91 million Series C to build out its virtual trial platform.

The software provider recently launched three new apps for decentralizing clinical trials, and saw a 500% revenue spike this year. And it isn’t alone. Back in August, Science 37 secured a $40 million round for its virtual trial tech, with support from Novartis, Sanofi Ventures and Amgen. Patients and researchers are taking a liking to the online approach, suggesting regulators could allow it to become a new normal even after the pandemic is over.

Close Gilead ally Galapagos is selling off one of its contract research organizations to a Polish pharma company.

Galapagos has agreed to sell 100% of the outstanding shares in the CRO Fidelta to Selvita, in a deal worth roughly $37 million expected to close in the first week of January. The acquisition is expected to nearly double Selvita’s revenues, the company says, as well as expand its drug discovery efforts.