RA Capital's Playbook for Smuggling China's Best Biotech Tricks Into the US
RA Capital built a turnkey platform called Swiftbridge that packages China's faster, cheaper clinical trial machine for its 100+ portfolio companies. It's a bold bet on US-China biotech cooperation at the exact moment Washington is trying to pull the plug.
Imagine you're a tiny biotech startup with a promising drug and a rapidly shrinking bank account. You need clinical data to survive, but running trials in the US is expensive, slow, and brutal on cash. Now imagine someone hands you a neatly wrapped package: China's entire clinical trial machine, ready to go, no assembly required.
That's basically what RA Capital just built.
The Box That Could Change Drug Development
RA Capital, one of biotech's most influential investors, has rolled out a platform called Swiftbridge that packages Chinese clinical trial expertise into a turnkey offering for its portfolio companies. Think of it like a franchise kit for running trials in China. Early-stage biotechs get access to investigators, trial sites, regulatory know-how, and CRO networks without having to figure out any of it themselves.
The firm's partner Josh Resnick, who oversees Swiftbridge, described the goal as letting companies "operate at China speed" without building their own knowledge about the country. For startups that can barely afford to keep the lights on, that's a compelling pitch.
Swiftbridge grew out of RA Capital's existing infrastructure: Raven, its company-creation incubator, and Blackbird, an earlier platform designed to help portfolio companies navigate foreign regulatory systems. Now those pieces have been stitched together into something more ambitious, serving over 100 companies in RA's portfolio.
Why China? Follow the Math.
The numbers tell a pretty clear story. Clinical trials in China cost 50 to 60% less than in the US, according to GlobalData. Early-phase trials can run 60 to 70% faster than in other major markets. The country's drug regulator, the NMPA, reviews clinical trial applications in an average of 50 working days, and a new expedited pathway announced in late 2025 can cut that to just 30 days for priority drugs.
Then there's the enrollment advantage. China has a massive population of treatment-naïve patients (people who haven't been treated with existing therapies), which is gold for clinical trials. Enrollment that might take a year in the US can happen in months. By 2022, China accounted for roughly 28 to 30% of global clinical trial activity, about double its share in 2016.
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For a cash-strapped biotech, all of this translates into one thing: earlier proof that your drug works, for a fraction of the cost. That proof-of-concept data is the single most important value inflection point in a young company's life. It's the difference between raising your next round at a premium and running out of money.
RA Capital Already Has the Receipts
Swiftbridge isn't a theory. RA Capital has been running this playbook for years, just less formally. The firm has repeatedly built US companies around drugs licensed from Chinese biotechs, generated clinical data, and flipped them for enormous returns.
Aiolos Bio was created around an asthma drug licensed from China's Hengrui Pharmaceuticals. GSK bought it. Metsera was sold to Pfizer for a staggering $10 billion. Candid Therapeutics followed a similar path and planned a reverse merger with Rallybio to go public.
The pattern is clear: find a promising Chinese clinical asset, wrap it in a US-based company, advance it with Chinese clinical infrastructure, and either IPO or sell. Swiftbridge just systematizes that approach and makes it available across the entire portfolio.
RA Capital has even launched a SPAC called Research Alliance III, designed to merge with a Chinese biotech or healthcare company and list it on Nasdaq. The SPAC initially planned to sell 5 million shares at $10 each but was upsized before pricing to 7.5 million shares at $10 each, raising $75 million. The filing explicitly notes that China provides a "large inventory" of drug prospects, and RA expects to keep forming new companies around them.
The Elephant in the Room: Washington
All of this is happening at what might be the worst possible moment for US-China biotech cooperation.
The BIOSECURE Act became law in December 2025 as part of the defense spending bill. It bars US government agencies from contracting with designated "biotechnology companies of concern" (essentially certain Chinese firms) and blocks federal grants from flowing to projects that rely on those companies' services. That means any biotech using a flagged Chinese CRO or manufacturer could find itself locked out of NIH funding, BARDA contracts, and government procurement.
Meanwhile, proposed legislation like the BINSA bill would go even further, potentially screening US licensing deals, joint ventures, and equity investments involving Chinese biotech entities.
The industry is already responding by segmenting pipelines into "federal-clean" programs (no Chinese provider involvement) and "China-leveraged" programs (privately funded, designed to avoid triggering restrictions). It's like maintaining two separate kitchens: one that passes government inspection, one where you cook however you want.
RA Capital's Bet: Walls Won't Work
RA Capital isn't running from this tension. It's running straight into it.
Resnick has argued that severing the US-China biotech bridge would make American companies "less efficient and less competitive," ultimately hurting US patients and the economy without meaningfully slowing China's progress. RA's managing partner Peter Kolchinsky has been even more pointed, writing that broad biotech protectionism would "destroy the U.S. biopharmaceutical industry for nothing."
Their solution is structural. Swiftbridge is designed to separate clinical execution in China from IP ownership and manufacturing, which stay in trusted jurisdictions like the US and Europe. By keeping the sensitive stuff stateside while tapping China's speed and cost advantages for trial execution, RA believes its portfolio companies can stay on the right side of regulations while still capturing the upside.
It's a clever bit of financial engineering, essentially building a firewall between the parts of drug development that Washington cares about (IP, manufacturing, genetic data) and the parts where China genuinely offers a better deal (patient enrollment, early-phase trials, speed to data).
What This Means for the Rest of Biotech
RA Capital manages billions and backs over 100 companies. If Swiftbridge works at scale, it could set a template that other investors and biotechs copy. The message to the industry is simple: you need a China strategy, not a China avoidance strategy.
For early-stage companies desperate for proof-of-concept data on a tight budget, the math is hard to argue with. For investors, RA's track record (Aiolos, Metsera, Candid) suggests this isn't wishful thinking; it's a repeatable model with real exits.
But the political risk is real and growing. If BINSA-style legislation passes, or if the BIOSECURE Act's scope expands beyond government-funded programs, the entire model could face serious headwinds. RA is betting that pragmatism will win over protectionism. History suggests that's usually the right bet in biotech, where patients and profits both depend on getting drugs developed as fast and cheaply as possible.
The question isn't whether China's clinical trial advantages are real. They obviously are. The question is whether Washington will let American companies use them. RA Capital is betting on "yes."
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