Blade Therapeutics will join the Nasdaq wave next quarter via a blank-check deal that will give the biotech about $255 million to bankroll trials in fibrosis and neurodegenerative conditions.
The 2016 Fierce 15 winner will merge with Biotech Acquisition Company. SPRIM Global Investments' special purpose acquisition company, which apparently did not hire a branding firm, will use its blank check to acquire Blade for an enterprise value of about $353 million. Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer's venture outlet and other financiers are backing the deal in a private investment in public equity.
Proceeds from the deal will bankroll multiple clinical trials of Blade's oral, small-molecule drugs. That includes a phase 2 study of Blade's lead asset, autotaxin inhibitor cudetaxestat, in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in the first half of next year, as well as a phase 1 trial of BLD-2184, a calpain inhibitor, for genetic orphan neurodegenerative conditions, also in the first half of 2022.
Blade has two more calpain inhibitors for lung fibrosis in the preclinical stages of development. Calpain plays a role in muscle protein degradation and reorganization of cytoskeletal proteins.
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Despite a roaring surge in 2020 and early 2021, the SPAC market has been less prominent in recent months in the biotech industry. Blade follows MoonLake Immunotherapeutics, which inked a $230 million SPAC tie-up with Helix Acquisition last month.
Blade's SPAC transaction comes four weeks after the biotech mourned the death of its general counsel, Alan C. Mendelson.