A Bei­jing-based rare dis­ease and on­col­o­gy play­er has raised $98 mil­lion to help fund the ex­pan­sion of its pipeline as well as a com­mer­cial port­fo­lio.

CAN­bridge put out word Tues­day that the glob­al pri­vate eq­ui­ty play­er Gen­er­al At­lantic joined forces with Chi­nese CRO Wuxi AppTec to lead the Se­ries D, with both ready to chip in an ex­tra $10 mil­lion each un­der the right con­di­tions. The syn­di­cate in­cludes RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, Hud­son Bay Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, Yuan­Ming Pru­dence Fund and Tigermed.

The new in­fu­sion sets CAN­Bridge up for an IPO in a year or two, ac­cord­ing to CFO Glenn Has­san.

A spe­cial­ist in rare ge­net­ic dis­eases, CAN­bridge has been col­lab­o­rat­ing with WuXi Bi­o­log­ics, a sis­ter com­pa­ny of the CRO, on dis­cov­er­ing and de­vel­op­ing new drugs for its tar­get in­di­ca­tions.

Like a num­ber of top Chi­na drug play­ers, CAN­bridge is get­ting start­ed with some ex­ist­ing meds in-li­censed for the Asian mar­ket while fol­low­ing up with some more orig­i­nal work. Its drug Hunterase is an en­zyme re­place­ment ther­a­py un­der re­view now by Chi­nese reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties. And the biotech has high hopes for Ner­l­ynx, the breast can­cer drug from Puma.

CAN­bridge has about 60 staffers on the ground in Chi­na, about half of whom sup­port the com­mer­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion, CEO James Xue told End­points News from their Cam­bridge, MA of­fice.

“We are def­i­nite­ly build­ing what I would say as one of the most ro­bust com­mer­cial plat­form for rare dis­ease in the Greater Chi­na re­gion that would re­al­ly en­able us to do what we call high-touch launch and op­er­a­tions of rare dis­ease prod­ucts,” he said.

Hav­ing repo­si­tioned the com­pa­ny to fo­cus on rare dis­ease rather than just on­col­o­gy, Xue — the for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er of Gen­zyme — said the Chi­nese mar­ket is warm­ing up to rare dis­ease drugs. Take the up­take of Cerezyme, which launched in Chi­na in 2008 un­der his watch. It wasn’t un­til the end of 2012 that en­zyme re­place­ment ther­a­py re­ceived mu­nic­i­pal re­im­burse­ment from Shang­hai; but in the fol­low­ing years cov­er­age has ex­pand­ed in­to about 10 provinces and cities, with up to 100% cov­er­age.

Aware­ness is al­so clear­ly spread­ing from the pa­tient and physi­cian lev­el to the pol­i­cy­mak­ers, with rare dis­ease lan­guage and lists of­fi­cial­ly writ­ten in­to law. And the ag­gres­sive price ne­go­ti­a­tions that gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have been do­ing for the Na­tion­al Re­im­burse­ment Drug List is a sign that they are mak­ing room for dis­eases cur­rent­ly com­plete­ly un­cov­ered, he added.

“Those are the el­e­ments or the mov­ing parts grad­u­al­ly in place that would al­low us to hope for and al­so plan for rare dis­ease mar­ket in a way that its re­im­bursed mar­ket is around the cor­ner,” he said.

So­cial im­age: James Xue, CAN­bridge CEO

The average level of investment required for a biotech start-up to succeed is increasing every year, elevating the pressure even further on venture capital to make smart financial investments. Financial investment alone, however, does not always guarantee that exciting innovations can be transformed into real businesses that make a meaningful difference to patients.

Beyond just capital

At Astellas Venture Management (AVM) – a wholly-owned venture capital organization within Astellas, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area – capital is just one of the ingredients we offer to add value to our biotechnology investments and partnerships. We generally take a strategic investor approach for companies in our invested portfolio, providing access to expertise, technology and/or resources in addition to the injection of finance. An equity investment from AVM can include access to Astellas’ research and development (R&D) capabilities and expertise, and a global network of partner academic institutions and biotechnology companies, to help advance and accelerate the start-up’s innovation.

Unum $UMRX is working its way through a survival plan of sorts.

After getting hit with a trio of FDA holds in its brief public history and triggering its second pivot to a new lead drug program while laying off 60% of the staff, the troubled penny stock biotech Unum Therapeutics has hatched new plans to secure financial backing while lining up a go-forward strategy for the company.

First, Lincoln Park Capital Fund has agreed to buy up to $25 million of the long-suffering stock, as Unum directs. And the executive team — led by CEO Chuck Wilson — has put everything on the table for consideration: a sale, acquisition, merger, licensing deal, you name it. The ACTR707 program, meanwhile, is being formally wrapped up — their second failed lead program.