Gene&Cell Therapy >> Two SPAC’d biotechs raise additional money as Bihua Chen’s
blank check closes $184M IPO: The post-SPAC life isn’t all too great for most biotech companies — or those in other industries, for that matter. But some drug developers that went the blank-check route have found greener pastures in recent months, with two of them announcing large financings this week.
Bihua Chen
This is amid a second biotech SPAC from Bihua Chen, founder of Cormorant Asset Management. Known as Helix Acquisition Corp. II $HLXB, the SPAC closed a $184 million initial public offering on Wednesday. It will hunt for a biotech or other healthcare business to combine with after Helix I found success with MoonLake Immunotherapeutics.
As for the two SPAC’d biotechs, bladder cancer gene therapy company enGene nabbed $200 million in a private placement at a 31% premium to its Tuesday closing price, while non-statin cardiovascular company NewAmsterdam Pharma priced a $175.3 million public offering on Tuesday evening.
The raises follow a string of nine-figure financings for public biotechs in recent months, many in advance of or shortly after big data readouts. For enGene and NewAmsterdam, which went public via SPAC in November 2023 and November 2022, respectively, the raises mark a positive in the relatively bleak SPAC universe.
The SPAC market “has cratered due to the deep underperformance of pandemic-era de-SPACs,” Oppenheimer bankers wrote in a 2023 review last month. Nine biopharma companies opted for a SPAC in 2023 compared to 21 in 2021, per the report.
A few positive signals have emerged for the alternative financing vehicle, lately, though: Chen’s second SPAC (which originally set out for $100 million), and AbbVie’s $8.7 billion plans for Cerevel Therapeutics might serve as the best SPAC combination exit in industry history.
enGene
The $200 million raise for enGene, which is more than the $138 million in proceeds from its SPAC deal, comes as the Boston and Montreal non-viral gene therapy maker runs a pivotal study of its candidate for certain forms of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, or NMIBC.
The money gives enGene runway into 2027, and investors appeared happy: Shares of the biotech $ENGN skyrocketed 91% before Wednesday’s opening bell.
The NMIBC field is riding a wave of momentum. CG Oncology, which is also in Phase III, kicked off the 2024 IPO class with a 95% pop in its first day of trading last month. Meanwhile, ImmunityBio inked up to $320 million in financing last month as it awaits an April PDUFA following an FDA rejection last year. And UroGen, which started its rolling NDA submission last month, raised $120 million on the back of Phase III data last summer.
Jason Hanson
enGene combined with a SPAC sponsored by Forbion, a European investor that has seen recent M&A successes with Aiolos Bio, Inversago… #lucidquest #genetherapy #celltherapy
