An­oth­er day, an­oth­er start­up at Vivek Ra­maswamy’s Roivant. And this time he’s un­der­scor­ing the glob­al na­ture of the in­dus­try and his busi­ness strat­e­gy, as Chi­na’s biotech scene ex­plodes with fresh cash and some fa­mil­iar drugs.

Vivek Ra­maswamy

This morn­ing Roivant un­veiled Sino­vant along with CITICPE, a Chi­nese pri­vate eq­ui­ty group. This com­pa­ny is based in Bei­jing and Shang­hai, and it’s been as­sem­bling an ex­ec­u­tive crew and pipeline for to­day’s an­nounce­ment.

Sino­vant has been tak­ing some of Roivant’s cash re­serves to build up a pipeline of 11 drugs, fol­low­ing an in-li­cens­ing strat­e­gy that is all the rage these days. And it comes with a spe­cial Ra­maswamy twist, as the com­pa­ny looks to get start­ed in Phase III on a slate of ther­a­pies that can be po­si­tioned for a rel­a­tive­ly quick Asian launch.

The biotech has three top drugs:

• De­r­azan­ti­nib, a fi­brob­last growth fac­tor re­cep­tor (FGFR) in­hibitor in glob­al Phase III de­vel­op­ment for the treat­ment of a liv­er can­cer — a big mar­ket in Chi­na — called in­tra­hep­at­ic cholan­gio­car­ci­no­ma.
• Lefa­mulin, a late-stage an­tibi­ot­ic that has been stud­ied for com­mu­ni­ty-ac­quired bac­te­r­i­al pneu­mo­nia.
• And RVT-802, brought in from sis­ter com­pa­ny En­zy­vant af­ter that Roivant sub­sidiary filed for an FDA ap­proval for a rare dis­ease called Di­Ge­orge Anom­aly.

Can­wen Jiang

Sino­vant al­so just gained the rights to de­vel­op naron­apride, a drug in­tend­ed to treat ir­ri­ta­ble bow­el syn­drome with con­sti­pa­tion.

In an­oth­er clas­sic Roivant move, Ra­maswamy has re­cruit­ed top tal­ent for this lat­est biotech ven­ture. No­var­tis vet Can­wen Jiang — who ran glob­al R&D groups for the phar­ma gi­ant — will run the op­er­a­tion af­ter years in the bio­phar­ma trench­es, work­ing on a slate of piv­otal tri­als.

The com­pa­nies aren’t talk­ing num­bers to­day, but Roivant doesn’t starve its com­pa­nies of cash. Ra­maswamy’s first big drug at Ax­o­vant — the orig­i­nal vant in what is now a grow­ing group with 13 com­pa­nies — was a no­to­ri­ous flop, but he has the best con­nec­tions in the world­wide in­dus­try and a keen un­der­stand­ing for lin­ing up bil­lions in cash re­serves.

The busi­ness plan here, says a Roivant spokesper­son, is to find clin­i­cal-stage drugs at small­er biotechs and in-li­cens­ing them for de­vel­op­ment for the Chi­nese drug mar­ket. And there are more deals to come.

The co-founder is Xi­nan Chen, who’s been work­ing on build­ing new star­tups at Roivant.

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”