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.

While the US biosimilars industry has generally been a disappointment since its inception, with FDA approving 33 biosimilars since 2015, just a fraction of those have immediately followed their approvals with launches. And more than a handful of biosimilars for two of the biggest blockbusters of all time — AbbVie’s Humira and Amgen’s Enbrel — remain approved by FDA but still have not launched because of legal settlements.

As President Biden’s Build Back Better Act — and, with it, potentially the Democrats’ last shot at major drug pricing reforms in the foreseeable future — remains on life support, the Congressional Budget Office isn’t helping their case.

The CBO last week released a new slide deck, outlining an update to its model on how Medicare negotiations might take a bite out of new drugs making it to market. The new model estimates a 10% long-term reduction in the number of new drugs, whereas a previous CBO report from August estimated that 8% fewer new drugs will enter the market over 30 years.