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.

In the insular world of biotech, a spectacular failure can sometimes stay on any executive’s record for a long time. But for David Meek, the man at the helm of FerGene’s recent implosion, two questionable exits made way for what could be an excellent rebound.

Meek, most recently FerGene’s CEO and a past head at Ipsen, has become CEO at Mirati Therapeutics, taking the reins from founding CEO Charles Baum, who will step over into the role of president and head of R&D, according to a release.

For a first-time fund, Jeito Capital talks a lot about continuity.

Rafaèle Tordjman had spotlighted that concept ever since she started building the firm in 2018, promising to go the extra mile(s) with biotech entrepreneurs while pushing them to reach patients faster.

Coincidentally, the lack of continuity was one of the sore spots listed in a report about the European healthcare sector published that same year by the European Investment Bank — whose fund is one of the LPs, alongside the American pension fund Teacher Retirement System of Texas and Singapore’s Temasek, to help Jeito close its first fund at $630 million (€534 million). As previously reported, Sanofi had chimed in €50 million, marking its first investment in a French life sciences fund.

Biopharma’s resident antibody-drug conjugate expert Seagen has scored a clutch of oncology approvals in recent years, finding gold in what are known as “third-gen” ADCs. Now, another of their partnered conjugates is ready for prime time.

The FDA on Monday handed an accelerated approval to Seagen and Genmab’s Tivdak (tisotumab vedotin-tftv, or “TV”) in second-line patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer who previously progressed after chemotherapy rather than PD-(L)1 systemic therapy, the companies said in a release.

Illumina Ventures closed off its second investment fund with a total commitment of $325 million, offering fresh fuel to back a slate of startups that have already included a smorgasbord of companies, covering everything from diagnostics to biotech drug development and genomics.

Fund II brings the total investment under Illumina Ventures’ oversight to $560 million, which has been focused on early-stage companies. And it has a transatlantic portfolio that includes SQZ, Twist and Encoded Therapeutics.

Several months after emerging from what CEO Raju Mohan called “quiet mode” with a mammoth $114 million raise, Ventyx Biosciences is now making its plans for the clinic loud and clear.

The California-based immune modulation player kicked the week off with a $51 million Series B, while also naming some key hires ahead of its big clinical push.

The CMO slot is going to Jörn Drappa, former CMO at Viela Bio before it was bought out by Horizon Therapeutics earlier this year. The AstraZeneca vet stayed on at Horizon for a while as executive VP of R&D before making the jump to Ventyx.