Mod­er­na’s Covid-19 vac­cine has trans­formed the once-back­wa­ter biotech in­to one of the most high­ly val­ued drug­mak­ers in the world in the span of a year. But what does the fu­ture hold for Mod­er­na’s star turn? A small-scale dis­cov­ery pact could of­fer a clue.

Mod­er­na will hold ex­clu­sive rights to four mR­NA-based im­muno-on­col­o­gy can­di­dates us­ing pro­pri­etary bind­ing tech from Au­to­lus, a biotech best known for its work on “off-the-shelf” CAR-T ther­a­pies, the part­ners said Mon­day.

Un­like some oth­er dis­cov­ery pacts in­volv­ing big-name drug­mak­ers, the deal doesn’t come with up­front cash straight away. Au­to­lus will be due an up­front pay­ment for each can­di­date if Mod­er­na choos­es to opt-in with down­stream reg­u­la­to­ry and com­mer­cial mile­stones and roy­al­ty rights.

De­spite the scanty de­tails, shares of $AUTL were trad­ing up about 17% be­fore the bell.

It’s a low risk en­deav­or for Mod­er­na, which un­der the watch­ful eye of CEO Stéphane Ban­cel has seen its mar­ket cap ex­plode to near­ly $142 bil­lion amid the rise of its Covid-19 vac­cine and its plat­form po­ten­tial in oth­er in­di­ca­tions.

The pact, while mea­ger, could al­so of­fer some in­sight in­to how Mod­er­na is think­ing about its next steps, look­ing for out­side part­ners to help de­vel­op bet­ter ways to traf­fic mR­NA-based ther­a­peu­tics in­to tu­mor cells.

The linch­pin of the deal is the binders that Au­to­lus has tout­ed as a key tech­nol­o­gy. Al­though it didn’t dis­close the binders it’ll ex­plore with Mod­er­na, the com­pa­ny us­es a CAT binder in its CAR-T can­di­dates, a syn­thet­ic an­ti­body the biotech be­lieves has a short­er half-life than the stan­dard FMC63 binder used in oth­er ther­a­pies, po­ten­tial­ly lim­it­ing the se­ri­ous side ef­fects as­so­ci­at­ed with the class. In a note to clients, Mizuho an­a­lysts called the deal a “broad val­i­da­tion” of Au­to­lus’ plat­form if, ul­ti­mate­ly, a heav­i­ly qual­i­fied one.

But the tie-up will like­ly come as cold so­lace for mar­ket watch­ers wait­ing for if, or when, Mod­er­na will use its grow­ing cash po­si­tion to start ink­ing re­search deals or po­ten­tial­ly add a small­er biotech to the fold out­right. Dri­ven by grow­ing sales for its Covid-19 vac­cine and the val­i­da­tion of its mR­NA vac­cine plat­form writ large, Mod­er­na has seen its mar­ket cap sky­rock­et in re­cent days — now sur­pass­ing no less a light than old stal­wart Am­gen — with no end in sight to the growth.

How Mod­er­na will cap­i­tal­ize on that suc­cess to set it­self up in the fu­ture is still yet to be seen.

Despite whispers of a busy year for M&A, deal activity in the pharma space is actually down 30% on a semi-annualized basis, according to PwC’s latest report on deal activity. But don’t rule out larger deals in the second half of the year, the consultants said.

PwC pharmaceutical and life sciences consulting solutions leader Glenn Hunzinger expects to see Big Pharma companies picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill pipeline gaps ahead of a slew of big patent cliffs. Though a bear market continues to maul the biotech sector, Hunzinger said recent deals indicate that pharma companies are still paying above current trading prices.

Following the Supreme Court’s historic decision on Friday to overturn Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, Attorney General Merrick Garland sought to somewhat reassure women that states will not be able to ban the prescription drug sometimes used for abortions.

Following the decision, the New England Journal of Medicine also published an editorial strongly condemning the reversal, saying it “serves American families poorly, putting their health, safety, finances, and futures at risk.”

GSK, newly branded and soon-to-be demerged, shared interim results from its Phase II trial on its chronic hepatitis B treatment, one that it says has the “potential to lead to a functional cure.”

At a presentation at the EASL International Liver Congress, GSK shared that in around 450 patients who received its hep B drug bepirovirsen for 24 weeks, just under 30% had hepatitis B surface antigen and viral DNA levels that were too low to detect.

The story of Amryt Pharma’s candidate for the genetic skin condition epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, will soon enter another chapter.

After the Irish drugmaker’s candidate, dubbed Oleogel-S10 and marketed as Filsuvez, was handed a CRL earlier this year, the company announced in a press release that it plans to submit a formal dispute resolution request for the company’s NDA for Oleogel-S10.