Mon­ey is fly­ing for com­pa­nies promis­ing to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way clin­i­cal tri­als are con­duct­ed. Leaps by Bay­er is the lat­est to get be­hind one of these play­ers, lead­ing a $200 mil­lion ven­ture round for Hu­ma Ther­a­peu­tics and its dig­i­tal “hos­pi­tal at home” tech.

Lon­don-based Hu­ma un­veiled a $130 mil­lion Se­ries C on Wednes­day, which it will use to ex­pand its dig­i­tal plat­form in the US, Asia and the Mid­dle East. As part of the round, the com­pa­ny can ex­er­cise an­oth­er $70 mil­lion com­mit­ment lat­er on.

“We’re al­ready demon­strat­ing how ‘hos­pi­tal at home’ can trans­form health­care, and how de­cen­tral­ized clin­i­cal tri­als can ad­vance re­search in ways that weren’t imag­in­able even one year ago,” CEO Dan Vah­dat said in a state­ment. “Now we want to ac­cel­er­ate the pace of change and con­tin­ue to in­no­vate for bet­ter care and re­search world­wide.”

Hu­ma boasts wear­able tech­nol­o­gy and a pa­tient app that helps re­searchers pre­screen par­tic­i­pants, con­duct re­mote vis­its via tele­health, track med­ica­tion and col­lect re­al-life da­ta. The com­pa­ny says its plat­form can dou­ble clin­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty and re­duce hos­pi­tal read­mis­sions by over a third, with pa­tient ad­her­ence lev­els of over 90%.

Hi­tachi Ven­tures led the round along with Leaps by Bay­er, and new share­hold­ers in­clude Sam­sung Next, Sony In­no­va­tion Fund by IGV, Unilever Ven­tures, HAT Tech­nol­o­gy & In­no­va­tion Fund, Nikesh Aro­ra (for­mer pres­i­dent of Soft­Bank) and Michael Diek­mann (chair­man of Al­lianz).

Hu­ma isn’t the on­ly tech de­vel­op­er at­tract­ing in­vestors with its de­cen­tral­ized tri­al ap­proach. Last week, Sci­ence 37 land­ed uni­corn sta­tus when it agreed to a SPAC merg­er with LifeSci Ac­qui­si­tion II Corp. Ac­cord­ing to a re­port Sci­ence 37 con­duct­ed it­self, CEO David Co­man said more than 80% of bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies plan on con­duct­ing a clin­i­cal tri­al us­ing at least some de­cen­tral­ized el­e­ments this year, though near­ly 60% don’t have the in­ter­nal ca­pa­bil­i­ties to do it.

Back in Feb­ru­ary, Dublin-based CRO Icon struck a deal to ac­quire PRA Health Sci­ences for $12 bil­lion to fo­cus on de­cen­tral­ized tri­als — a move which would com­bine the 5th- and 6th-largest CROs by 2020 rev­enue. Last month, Ther­mo Fish­er an­nounced plans to ac­quire PPD — a CRO that boasts de­cen­tral­ized tri­al ca­pa­bil­i­ties — for $17.4 bil­lion. And back in No­vem­ber, soft­ware provider Med­able bagged a $91 mil­lion Se­ries C to build out its vir­tu­al tri­al plat­form.

“The pan­dem­ic has ex­posed weak­ness­es across health sys­tems around the world but through col­lab­o­ra­tion, in­no­va­tion, and com­pas­sion­ate lead­er­ship Hu­ma can sup­port faster and safer care for pa­tients through dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and rapid ac­cess to treat­ments by ac­cel­er­at­ing clin­i­cal re­search,” Hu­ma’s board di­rec­tor Clau­dia Suess­muth Dy­ck­er­hoff said in a state­ment.

Amgen is the latest pharma company to appear on the radar of Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is investigating the way pharma companies are using subsidiaries in low- or zero-tax countries to lower their tax bills.

Like its peers Merck, AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyden notes how Amgen uses its Puerto Rico operations to consistently pay tax rates that are substantially lower than the U.S. corporate tax rate of 21%, with an effective tax rate of 10.7% in 2020 and 12.1% in 2021.

After controversially spinning out its talc liabilities and filing for bankruptcy in an attempt to settle 38,000 lawsuits, Johnson & Johnson is now changing up the formula for its baby powder products.

J&J is beginning the transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio, the pharma giant announced on Thursday — just months after a federal judge ruled in favor of its “Texas two-step” bankruptcy to settle allegations that its talc products contained asbestos and caused cancer. An appeals court has since agreed to revisit that case.