In the rel­a­tive­ly small but hefty world of biotechs work­ing to bring new drugs from the West to Chi­na, Hill­house Cap­i­tal has been an ac­tive, if cau­tious, in­vestor. Not on­ly did it bet big on BeiGene ear­ly, it al­so co-led Ever­est Med­i­cines’ mon­ster $310 mil­lion round to bankroll com­mer­cial launch­es ear­li­er this year.

But now it’s go­ing all-in with its own start­up — and a twist to the mod­el.

Hua Mu

Ed Zhang and Hua Mu, ven­ture part­ners who joined the firm ear­ly this year, are the co-founders of Over­land Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. Oth­er than the ini­tial fo­cus on on­col­o­gy, au­toim­mune dis­eases and car­diometa­bol­ic dis­or­ders, the duo isn’t dis­clos­ing much about the com­pa­ny yet, al­though it’s clear that Hill­house, which had $10.6 bil­lion to spend for its last fund, isn’t hold­ing any mon­ey back when it comes to fund­ing deals and woo­ing tal­ent.

While the set­up echoes what Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors is do­ing through Lian­Bio, Over­land says it’s eye­ing a dif­fer­ent mar­ket by tar­get­ing plat­form plays that in­volve ad­vanced tech­nolo­gies. Think an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates, cell ther­a­py, RNAi and more.

“From a part­ner­ing per­spec­tive, I would def­i­nite­ly say we’re more flex­i­ble than oth­er typ­i­cal in-li­cens­ing mod­els,” said Ed Zhang, the CBO and COO, for whom “scale and speed” is a mantra.

That means opt­ing for co-de­vel­op­ment rather than sim­ple li­cens­ing, cre­at­ing spin­outs or joint ven­tures to col­lab­o­rate on mul­ti­ple ear­ly-stage as­sets, or even con­sid­er­ing eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment in their part­ner com­pa­nies.

Sta­tioned right in Boston, Zhang will lever­age the net­works he’s de­vel­oped over the last two decades across mul­ti­ple bio­phar­ma roles. Mean­while, Mu, the in­ter­im CEO and CMO, will split his time be­tween Seat­tle and the two Chi­na of­fices in Bei­jing and Shang­hai.

Pi­o­neers like Zai Lab and Ever­est, Mu not­ed, have “set a very high bar” for Chi­na-fac­ing com­pa­nies look­ing to bridge the in­no­va­tion gap.

“In the past, I think the fo­cus was more on the ex­e­cu­tion, op­er­a­tional fu­tures, right, be­cause those as­sets had al­ready mit­i­gat­ed risk be­fore,” Mu said, giv­ing the ex­am­ple of Ze­ju­la, which Zai Lab li­censed from Tesaro when it was in Phase III. “The key was how to ex­e­cute the pro­gram, de­vel­op­ment and reg­is­tra­tion in Chi­na.”

At a time when Chi­nese in­ter­est in cut­ting-edge drugs and tech­nolo­gies runs high, thanks in part to reg­u­la­to­ry re­forms and free flow of VC cash, that’s no longer enough. For new­com­ers, the cur­rent land­scape re­quires them to work more close­ly with col­lab­o­ra­tors, in­te­grat­ing lo­cal ex­per­tise with glob­al knowl­edge — a “much more so­phis­ti­cat­ed and de­mand­ing” ap­proach. But it’s al­so the kind of chal­lenge that Over­land was built to meet.

By tap­ping in­to Hill­house’s glob­al net­work and biotech ecosys­tem in Asia, the com­pa­ny promis­es to put to­geth­er the de­vel­op­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing and com­mer­cial know-how that would con­vince top-notch de­vel­op­ers to en­trust Over­land with their as­sets.

“In­vest­ing or part­ner­ing with those tech­nol­o­gy plat­form com­pa­nies re­quire a dif­fer­ent lev­el of cap­i­tal re­sources and ex­per­tise in those li­censed ter­ri­to­ries,” Zhang said. “But ac­tu­al­ly that is by de­sign. That is our fo­cus.”

David Livingston, the Dana-Farber/Harvard Med scientist who helped shine a light on some of the key molecular drivers of breast and ovarian cancer, died unexpectedly last Sunday.

One of the senior leaders at Dana-Farber during his nearly half century of work there, Livingston was credited with shedding light on the genes that regulate cell growth, with insights into inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations that helped lay the scientific foundation for targeted therapies and earlier detection that have transformed the field.

Three Senate Democrats are backing an FDA plan to require mandatory prescriber education for opioids as overdose deaths have risen sharply over the past decade, with almost 97,000 American opioid-related overdose deaths in the past year alone.

While acknowledging a decline in overall opioid analgesic dispensing in recent years, the FDA said it’s reconsidering the need for mandatory prescriber training through a REMS given the current situation with overdoses, and is seeking input on the aspects of the opioid crisis that mandatory training could potentially mitigate.

Just as Avoro Capital’s campaign to derail Merck’s proposed $11.5 billion buyout of Acceleron gains steam, Bristol Myers Squibb is leaning in with some hefty counterweight.

The pharma giant is planning to tender its Acceleron shares, Bloomberg reported, which add up to a sizable 11.5% stake. Based on the offer price, the sale would net Bristol Myers around $1.3 billion.

To complete its deal, Merck needs a majority of shareholders to agree to sell their shares.

The FDA late Wednesday signed off on authorizing the use of heterologous — or what FDA calls a “mix and match” of a primary vaccine series and different booster doses — for all currently available Covid-19 vaccines, in addition to separately authorizing Moderna and J&J boosters.

On the mix-and-match approach, which FDA officials insisted isn’t too confusing in a press conference, the agency offered the example of an 18-year-old who received the J&J shot at least two months ago and may now receive a single booster of the J&J, a half dose of the Moderna, or the Pfizer-BioNTech booster.