Swiss biotech Relief Therapeutics is slated to enter a reverse merger with private U.S. biotech Renexxion and forge ahead with the latter’s gastrointestinal pipeline.
Biotech executives are reaching into a deep bag of tricks to come up with the best possible ways to live up to their ultimate potential. The dual-track option, where a company pursues both an IPO and an acquisition, is becoming not just the norm, but a necessity.
Lenz Therapeutics is absorbing sickle-cell-focused Graphite Bio in a reverse merger that will see the combined company reemerge with a focus on vision loss and $225 million in cash on hand at close.
Humanigen is running out of options. Talks over a reverse merger have collapsed and, with efforts to find another deal or raise funding failing, the biotech is considering filing for bankruptcy in the third quarter.
Gene therapy startup Neurogene has reached a deal to go public through a reverse merger with cancer drug developer Neoleukin Therapeutics, the companies announced Tuesday.
Reverse mergers are all the rage as cash-depleted public biotechs search for viable next chapters, with Korro Bio and Frequency Therapeutics the latest to fuse.
Immunome and Morphimmune will come together as one company through a reverse merger, placing Clay Siegall, Ph.D.—who left his role as CEO of Seagen last year after being arrested for domestic abuse—in the chief executive chair.
With the IPO window barely open, investors sick of Spacs, and increasing numbers of cash-rich and pipeline-poor developers, conditions are ripe for reverse mergers. Four such transactions have emerged so far this year and, unless the public markets become more conducive to flotations, more will surely follow.
A reverse merger typically involves a private company taking over a public group’s listing, with the latter party all but wound up. In reality these transactions follow variations on a theme, as with the deal announced today that will see London-listed Redx take over Jounce’s Nasdaq listing.
Struggling Bone Therapeutics may have caught a break. The cell therapy company is rebranding with the name BioSenic following a reverse merger with France’s Medsenic that closed Tuesday.
The cynical view of reverse mergers – takeovers of failed groups that have little more to offer than their market listing – is that they provide weak private companies a back door to the stock exchange. A quick scan of the biopharma groups that listed this way certainly reveals more disappointments than success stories.
Forte Biosciences, which reversed into Tocagen last year after that group's collapse, is the latest to join this sorry group. The misfire of its lead atopic dermatitis project last week prompted an 83% share price collapse. With only $51m in the bank perhaps Forte's short public existence will end the way it began, with the company becoming a reverse merger target itself.