A third for­mer Glax­o­SmithK­line sci­en­tist caught in an al­leged plot to steal trade se­crets and sell the work in Chi­na plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy on Mon­day.

Lucy Xi, a 44-year-old sci­en­tist, was ac­cused of feed­ing her for­mer hus­band, Yan Mei, con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion on GSK’s re­search in­to mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies for his work on a new Chi­nese biotech com­pa­ny called Renophar­ma, ac­cord­ing to the charges.

Mei es­tab­lished Renophar­ma back in 2012 along with Tao Li and Yu Xue, a for­mer top chemist at GSK’s Up­per Meri­on, PA, fa­cil­i­ty. While the com­pa­ny claimed to be do­ing R&D work in on­col­o­gy, US at­tor­ney Jen­nifer Ar­bit­ti­er Williams ar­gued Renophar­ma was ac­tu­al­ly used “as a repos­i­to­ry of in­for­ma­tion stolen from GSK.” Fur­ther­more, the gov­ern­ment of Chi­na sub­si­dized and sup­port­ed the com­pa­ny fi­nan­cial­ly.

Xue and Li plead­ed guilty to their con­spir­a­cy charges more than three years ago, while Mei re­mains a fugi­tive liv­ing in Chi­na, ac­cord­ing to the De­part­ment of Jus­tice. Xue’s sis­ter, Tian Xue, has al­so plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy.

“This de­fen­dant il­le­gal­ly stole trade se­crets to ben­e­fit her hus­band’s com­pa­ny, which was fi­nanced by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. The lifeblood of com­pa­nies like GSK is its in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, and when that prop­er­ty is stolen and trans­ferred to a for­eign coun­try, it threat­ens thou­sands of Amer­i­can jobs and jeop­ar­dizes the strate­gic ben­e­fits brought about through re­search and de­vel­op­ment,” Williams said in a state­ment.

Xi worked as a GSK sci­en­tist from Ju­ly 2008 to No­vem­ber 2015, ac­cord­ing to the in­dict­ment. In Jan­u­ary 2015, she sent Mei a GSK doc­u­ment con­tain­ing se­cret da­ta and in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing a sum­ma­ry of GSK’s re­search in­to mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies. In the body of the email, she wrote: “You need to un­der­stand it very well. It will help you in your fu­ture busi­ness [RENOPHAR­MA].”

While Xue plead­ed guilty back in 2018, she told the judge that she didn’t think she was shar­ing ac­tu­al trade se­crets. How­ev­er, the judge not­ed that pros­e­cu­tors didn’t need to prove that she un­der­stood the ma­te­r­i­al in­clud­ed trade se­crets, just that Xue knew she was of­fer­ing a look at con­fi­den­tial re­search.

Xi is sched­uled for sen­tenc­ing on April 12, ac­cord­ing to a Reuters re­port.

Chi­nese re­search has re­cent­ly come un­der in­creased scruti­ny by the US, with the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion black­list­ing and sanc­tion­ing dozens of gov­ern­ment re­search in­sti­tutes and pri­vate-sec­tor firms last month over con­cerns they were po­ten­tial­ly look­ing to weaponize biotech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing sup­posed “brain-con­trol weapon­ry,” ac­cord­ing to an ABC News re­port.

Just a cou­ple weeks ago, Charles Lieber, the for­mer Chair of Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Chem­istry and Chem­i­cal Bi­ol­o­gy De­part­ment was con­vict­ed of ly­ing to fed­er­al au­thor­i­ties about his af­fil­i­a­tion with Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na’s Thou­sand Tal­ents Pro­gram and the Wuhan Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy (WUT), and fail­ing to re­port in­come he re­ceived from WUT. FBI spe­cial agent Joseph R. Bonavolon­ta said Lieber “re­peat­ed­ly lied to his em­ploy­er, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and tax­pay­ers to fraud­u­lent­ly main­tain ac­cess to fed­er­al re­search funds.”

“To­day’s ver­dict re­in­forces our com­mit­ment to pro­tect our coun­try’s po­si­tion as a glob­al leader in re­search and in­no­va­tion and to hold those ac­count­able who ex­ploit and un­der­mine that po­si­tion through dis­hon­esty,” Bonavolon­ta said.

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.

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.

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis made a name for himself in the 2020 election cycle as the darling of the pharma industry, accepting hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions, even from the likes of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

Those contributions have led Tillis to attempt to re-write patent laws in pharma’s favor, a move which failed to gain steam in 2019, and request for a third time since January that the FDA should help stop “the false narrative that patent protections are to blame for high drug prices.”